Apple's not really a monopoly here, is it? In the operating system market, it's small. In the laptop market, it's small. In the Mac OS market, it's small.
EDIT: Guys, you can literally just install using Steam or Epic. It's really not a problem.
I can't remember using the Mac App Store for anything that wasn't made by Apple. I've had Macs for 14 years. I install plenty of software. The Mac App Store is pretty much the last place I go for software. It's nothing like the iOS App Store.
It's not a monopoly because you can buy phones and computers from plenty of other people. A large player is not a monopoly, and the choice exists if you don't like their offerings. I don't see how this is some kind of societal issue.
Depends on how you think about monopolies and bundling. For the most part Apple's devices and products face a pretty competitive landscape. But there are some areas where they have a very strong market position. The revenue for paid apps in America skews very heavily to the Apple App Store (people make apps for iOS only in the US but never Android only). The alternatives to going through the App Store are really not viable. The switching costs to consumers are very high and people buy phones because of core features (battery, camera, speakers, connectivity, display, touch screen). The availability and pricing of paid apps is such an afterthought for consumers as to be irrelevant. In this one small market Apple exerts its market dominance influence to take a lot of money from 3rd party developers. Of course this is small potatoes compared to all the other markets that they compete in and even as a fraction of their revenue. But this is Hacker News. A lot of developers hang out here. Some of whom have certainly had some bad experiences with the policies, restrictions and fees imposed by the App Store.
> For the most part Apple's devices and products face a pretty competitive landscape.
Not really. The point is less about market positioning and more about building fair platforms. Apple wants to frame themselves as an underdog competitor in the global economy, but they fail because they can't even build a fair or open platform when given total freedom to do so. This "failure" has made them a lot of money, but it's also come to the detriment of users everywhere, whether they know it or not. The law exists explicitly to push companies like Apple along when they get too fat and rest on their Carnegie laurels.
> The alternatives to going through the App Store are really not viable.
Someone ought to tell the Mac people this, they'll be heartbroken.
> In this one small market Apple exerts its market dominance influence to take a lot of money from 3rd party developers. Of course this is small potatoes compared to all the other markets that they compete in and even as a fraction of their revenue.
Last year Apple made more from services than they did from iPhone hardware. That's not just a "fraction" anymore.
Yeah, just like "competitors are forbidden" from, say, inserting their tech, logos, etc., into, e.g., vehicles. You're not going to find Ford allowing Tesla to stick its stuff in Ford's EV fleet, and vice-versa.
This whole strange fascination with claiming Apple is a monopoly is just silly. There is at least one major competitor to Apple in the mobile market (said competitor actually dominates that market by a huge margin) and literally dozens in the PC market. Apple isn't a monopoly, and it doesn't have to let competitors distribute their products within its own ecosystem.
What are you talking about? If you want to replace the stock Tesla Model 3 seats with Recaro seats, go right ahead. If you want to replace the stock Tesla Model 3 rims with some 22"s, or put a lift kit, or slam it, it's your car/money; you can do whatever you want with it. Certain state's governments may have opinions on what you're legally allowed to drive on their roads, but that's nothing to do with putting a hypothetical Ford battery in a Tesla.
Let's keep following in this thread. So if Ford created a 3rd-party battery pack, Tesla isn't legally allowed to prevent customers from replacing their battery pack with the Ford (or an Our Next Energy (ONE), who actually sells a) pack. Similarly, Ford has no legal standing to stop you if you buy a gasoline F-150, gut the motor and fuel tank, and install a Tesla motor and battery from a salvage title Model S.
This goes even further. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act from 1975 explicitly says Tesla isn't allowed to deny warranty coverage just because you used aftermarket or recycled parts, or went to a non-Tesla authorized auto shop for routine maintenance or repairs.
You don't own the iPhone you paid for, and the inability to install apps, with root permissions, is reason number 1 why. Meanwhile, you can actually take a wrench to a Ford F-150 all you want.
Your old text reads as if you consider this whole approach wrong and warn people against saying there's still a way to distribute software without consent from Apple.
The question of the blog post was whether it's viable for Mac developers to distribute apps without signing and notarizing them, and I argued that it wasn't: "This is why every Mac developer I know signs up for Developer ID and ships only signed, notarized apps. It would be financial suicide to do otherwise."
I've been philosophically opposed to Gatekeeper since its introduction more than 10 years ago, and that hasn't changed.
The mostly good news is that Apple mostly doesn't prevent non-malware developers from distributing their apps on the Mac. I'm aware of only 2 cases where Apple has intentionally abused its authority there: (1) Apple canceled the developer account of Epic Games after the famous trial. (2) Apple canceled the developer account of Kapeli after an allegation of App Store review fraud. However, the account was later restored, and Dash for Mac is currently signed and notarized. https://kapeli.com/dash
Apple requires $100 year to have the base ability to sign applications. As of Ventura you cannot bypass gatekeeper without a signature for a number of popular solutions. Electron being one of them. Apple developer license is apart of the app store. This in effect means that apple and the app store are a monopoly.
A monopoly is not defined by 100% control. It is defined by whom has the overwhelming control.
Mac Ventura only allows for "App store and identified developers". Meaning the application must be signed with an apple developer cert to go through gatekeeper.
> As of Ventura you cannot bypass gatekeeper without a signature for a number of popular solutions. Electron being one of them.
You can do so the same way you always could. Perhaps you're mixing it up with ARM Macs requiring code to be signed by something? (it doesn't have to be by an Apple certificate). You can still run self-signed code on macOS even with Apple Silicon and the latest OS versions and there's no sign they'll ever change that. Our distribution tool Conveyor will self-sign apps for you out of the box and create a web page that tells users what to do [1], albeit we should make it less wordy.
> Apple developer license is apart of the app store
A Developer ID is separate from the app store, they're different certificate types. I distribute Mac software outside the store with one, no problem.
I see no such thing as "self signing" that allows for distribution. Searches for that all point to "buy a developer account". I see no docs that reference it, at most self signing is referenced as still using an apple developer account.
Which makes sense, if all I had to do is sign some malware, that doesn't prevent me from spreading malware.
So if there is some method of this, it would be cool to know. I'll have to do some experiments.
You can self-sign and distribute, your users just have to know how to bypass GateKeeper. Apple document this on their website, it's not a hack or anything. It just means that unless they know the secret handshake macOS will say the app is damaged. The download page Conveyor generates has instructions for what to do.
They were still able to release the game for Mac via Steam (a competitor) instead, because macOS isn't fully iOSified yet.
On iOS, if Apple's store rejected them, there's no recourse. Apple blocks other stores from existing, and there's no competition in distribution, review, and of course payments and the cut.
> A good chunk of it wound up getting implemented.
It did?
1) "When we decided to pull Coda from the App Store (due to sandboxing)"
Sandboxing is still required.
2) "we regained our ability to release software the moment we need to"
Nope, nothing has changed there.
3) "we could fill a small book with frustrating and tragicomic App Review anecdotes"
This was written before the Untitled Goose Game rejections.
4) "Reviews are often the dumping ground of the uninformed"
Still painfully true!
5) Refunds: "And when this happens, we can do nothing."
Still true. Developers can't issue their own refunds, and the App Store doesn't even have an official refund policy. I've been seeing more and more people get their App Store refund requests rejected by Apple, for no apparent reason.
Mhm, review responses were added[0], Apple moved away from the "no refunds" policy[1], and completely stopped holding up bug fixes over guideline infractions[2]. That's a solid portion of his list! (I also think most of what you listed were not asks in that email)
This was just about the least Apple could do. You can't have a conversation, you can only post one reply. And in my experience, App Store reviewers almost never correct their bad reviews, even if you reply with info that will fix their problem.
> Apple moved away from the "no refunds" policy
Apple still has no official refund policy. You can request a refund, which Apple may or may not grant, as I mentioned, at Apple's own discretion, for any reason or no reason. So I don't see how anything has changed from Cabel's email.
> completely stopped holding up bug fixes over guideline infractions
Completely wrong. What happens is that App Review still rejects your bug fix updates. But then you can request that App Review let your update go through, and fix the problem in the next update. The problem is that this can still take an indefinite amount of time, because App Review can reject you at any time, even when you're asleep, then you have to contact them, then they have to see your message and respond, all of which can take half a day or more. It's a joke. We're still delayed.
I want to second what lapcat said. Apple promised to stop holding up bug fixes for rule violations, backtracked on some of that, and then just seemed to have given up on it entirely. Bugfix builds are routinely rejected, even now, and reviewers ignore you when you point out they shouldn't be.
After their initial announcement of the policy, Apple clarified that they would still reject bugfixes if the app violated section 5 of the guidelines, the section titled "Legal". On the surface, this would seem reasonable. After all, can't go violating legal requirements. However, this is still counter to the spirit of what they had promised. If it's up on the store already, if it's violating the law (e.g. for scamming users out of money), it should be taken down. If it's not violating the law, it's better that customers get the bugfix.
They also copied a bunch of rules from the other sections into section 5, to give themselves more leeway.
What needs to be regulated in this context? The game is available via Steam and not the Mac App Store. One distributor decided hosting it was worth the reputation, the other did not. Win-win for consumers in that there is more choice than otherwise.
Even via steam you still need to buy an apple dev license and sign it. If apple could get away with it, they would stop any app sourcing outside of the app store. They've made pushes in Ventura to make any non-signed executable not work out of the box.
Nothing about apples behavior is "win win". They're a corp that benefits from special protections against both civil and criminal liabilities as well as benefitting from masses of intellectual property. It's not some sort of balanced game, the scales were tipped completely into corpo land since early 2000s
It is wild that even a company like Panic, as well-loved, and with one of the richest histories on Mac, gets the same treatment as anyone else from App Store Review.
In a way it's kind of good to know that there is no special treatment, but this is poor behaviour towards the developers who made your platform.
Um...for those of us who were using Macs back when it wasn't clear how much longer Apple would be around—and especially for those of us involved with web stuff—Panic is nothing short of iconic. They're one of the few indie Mac devs who've managed to keep it going for decades, and their work has been consistently excellent.
So if I were Tim Apple, I would be a little worried by someone like Sasser saying "we tried to launch our crazy popular game on your App Store and ultimately didn't because one of your idiot reviewers gave us the runaround." That's a little like, I don't know, some record label passing on Nirvana because a junior talent scout thought that "the guys looked kind of greasy and the name sounds stupid."
> It is wild that even a company like Panic, as well-loved, and with one of the richest histories on Mac, gets the same treatment as anyone else from App Store Review.
This is because App Store reviewers are ignorant of Mac history and of most everything else, as evidenced by their frequently brain-dead rejections. (I say this as an App Store developer myself.)
> This is because App Store reviewers are ignorant of Mac history and of most everything else, as evidenced by their frequently brain-dead rejections
Microsoft's App Store reviewers are vendor staff from the same agencies that provide fungible CSR staff - the App Store reviewers I personally know are all good people (and it's unfair of me to put them in the same category as CSR workers) buuuuuut they aren't all computer culture historians. So I assume it's similar at Apple (though I gather Apple prefers to have FTEs under their direct control instead of using agencies?)
Now I'm curious how Apple handles the reportedly higher-than-average employee churn in those roles, as I heard that 6-18 months was a typical stint at MS's App Store reviews office at TEKSystems on Willows Rd - though I know people that stayed in that job for over 6 years, but they were never able to transition into a blue-badge role and were stuck as Orange Badges - which just isn't right.
Not quite the same treatment as anyone. Certainly corporate giants get warnings paired with face-to-face executive meetings instead of mysterious rejections:
They still sell the game on the Mac, and by all accounts don't really miss out on the revenue from not being in the Mac App Store (this isn't the only app they've chosen not to distribute there)
Since the already sell the game on the Mac, and as a well known company, are not as reliant on Mac App Store discovery, I imagine they didn't see it worth the effort of listing on the Mac App Store. It's slightly more convenient for users, but at the benefit of Apple getting a cut, and the developers loosing money. While Apple should be removing as many road blocks as possible to entice great developers on the MAS, it doesn't seem to be the case considering how many of the most popular Mac apps are not on the store, even though the developers ideally would like to be.
Don't really see this as an issue. The mac store is a curated platform, you still have the ability to install binaries you downloaded or got through other platforms like Steam.
If anything, they should make iOS more like this with the App Store only being the best content.
“It was then rejected for something else and at that point we just gave up and never bothered to resubmit.” This would be an interesting post if we had even the slightest bit more detail.
Must be nice to not have to deal with this shit, at least until you feel like it, because you're doing so well otherwise. Successful indie game devs are living the life.
Yes... Surprisingly that would still matter for their other (Mac only) software. Yet they still could choose to kick the can for this video game. Which is what I was talking about.
> This would be an interesting post if we had even the slightest bit more detail.
The bigger piece of background is that Untitled Goose Game is (previously unbeknownst to me) a wildly successful game. I think the point he's getting across is that first the game was rejected for something trivially stupid (not being able to skip credits, which you could actually do), and then again for something probably equally trivially stupid (point being Cabel couldn't even remember it, and they apparently took a "this is BS, why bother?" approach). It's like if some NFL team had the ability to pick a star quarterback in the NFL draft but decided against it because they didn't like his shoelaces or something.
Point of the post is that the Mac Store review process is so arbitrary that successful developers just take the approach of "Why bother?"
Also, "not being able to skip credits" seems like a really weird rule to have? Only sane interpretation I have is "not being able to exit game while credits are rolling."
Familiar. Hedgewars was for about half a year on the top page of free apps before Apple demanded that the GUI be rewritten in something other than Qt, something no one had the time to do, so it was pulled.
The reason given was that it needed to use a native GUI toolkit. I don't know why this was the case. Maintaining separate GUIs for Linux, Windows and OSX was definitely not practical though.
Ah, yeah, there was a rule requiring apps to use a native GUI toolkit when the App Store first launched over a decade ago, but that rule is no longer there.
Did it coincide with Team17 porting WORMS to the platform? Perhaps Apple lawyers werent feeling comfortable telling Hedgewars creators they dont want a pure ripoff in the store.
I mean lawyers don't tend towards subtlety. Either something has legal issues or it doesn't.
But. Heh. Ripoff. Might as well call the original worms a basic mashup of lemmings/scorched earth, or every 3d shooter interface post wolf3d/doom a ripoff of those. In the genre would be more accurate, and it definitely has a lot of unique elements.
Also, Super Tux Kart appears to be in the store.
An interesting thing about the Mac App Store: When you're on an Apple Silicon Mac, the Discover page doesn't show Intel-only apps (even if you have Rosetta installed, which I do). This is why the Top Free Games and Top Paid Games lists are half empty on the page.
Many Mac App Store games have not been ported to Apple Silicon yet (or ever, likely).
Sounds like a great opportunity for some upstarts to come in with new takes on categories that were previously dominated by someone who is resting easy not updating their app.
This looks... not true? M1 Air, App Store, Discover: "Top Free Games" has 15 entries, same as every other category. "Top Paid Games" does as well. Clicking "See All" on either opens to a free/paid side by side scroll view with ~200 entries for each.
Sigh. To quote from another of today's Hackernewsstories, people don't want a dishwasher, they want clean dishes.
People don't want a computer or smartphone, they want the things those devices afford them.
From a security perspective, the much vaunted "general purpose computing" reduces to "arbitrary code execution". It's very dangerous, and without some sort of allowlist-based restriction on what may be run on the average consumer's hardware, it becomes a playground for hackers, thieves, and malicious state actors.
The era of general purpose computing with consumer hardware is dead. Millions of customers are delighted with their restricted devices. Stop whining and move on with your lives, people.
> People don't want a computer or smartphone, they want the things those devices afford them.
They're entitled to it, I say. Hell, I even think other companies are entitled to make it for them.
What they cannot do is turn this layer of abstraction into an excuse for infinite profitability. People don't want coffee makers, they want coffee! That doesn't mean Keurig is necessarily allowed to stop other people from selling pods, though. Especially if they become the primary way that people get their coffee. We have a democratically controlled legal system that holds these people in check - particularly when the market doesn't behave. You can still be right here, but if Apple is taking advantage of this situation to fleece people beyond what can be considered reasonable, then we have to litigate them regardless. Hopefully in the future, Apple finds a way to prioritize things like security while also respecting the user's choice and agency.
It's time for armchair analysts and AAPL investors to take a hike. Some of us want Apple to succeed regardless of their monopolistic intent, and helping them requires us to prune their ugliest branches. We staved off half a decade of change with this "free market will fix things" mantra, and nothing improved. If Apple won't do what's right, then we'll be forced to.
At least in the American system, as long as people have an alternative computing platform (and they have several), there aren't a lot of backstops on what Apple can do to its users in terms of money charged or constraints placed on the devices they manufacture.
The market is "computers" and if Apple tightens its grip too far, they run people off to another solution. Everything else is economics as far as the American system is concerned.
In the American system, you're right. Apple is an international company though, and if enough countries insist that Apple play fair, how can they deny them?
The American system led us to a situation where Apple's global presence is exploitative. If Apple wants to get increasingly petty with their compliance, global regulators are apt to get increasingly petty with their regulation. Considering how Apple shrugged off Dutch regulators, it shouldn't surprise people when EU commissions move in with bigger demands. If those demands are unreasonable, then maybe Apple can run off to another market.
Nobody will stop you from framing this as a free market issue, but it's a comically small piece of the puzzle.
As long as Apple's a US company, the US law will dominate its actions because they might make less money in the world but the world won't jail them (well, can't jail anyone who really matters to the owners). If they think they can keep providing a better alternative with a heavy hand, they will, right up to regulation constraints.
This leaves us with your previous observaation
> If Apple won't do what's right, then we'll be forced to.
And I agree. And in a (mostly) free-market system structure like the US, the solution is obvious... There's a reason I haven't used Apple as my primary compute platform for approximately 15 years.
You can't install WireGuard outside of MAS because the VPN entitlements will not be granted by Apple for self-distributed apps; i.e. Macs have certain APIs that are already App-Store-only.
Imagine having to ID yourself to be allowed to install and use privacy software. What the actual fuck? "Privacy is a human right" is about as sincere as "don't be evil" these days.
Oh, there are other issues with self-distributed apps too. I use the Bitwarden desktop app (not the MAS version, as I don't use an Apple ID any longer) and the feature where it can cross-communicate to the Bitwarden firefox extension to enable TouchID login is not available in the self-distributed one.
Apple is slowly boiling the frog; every year there are more APIs in the OS that you can't use unless you are distributing via the MAS, which demands a phone number for an Apple ID even to download free apps.
I wish the FTC would come down hard on them, but unfortunately Apple has too much money and is too important of a bargaining chip in the coming Chinese trade war.
I have a better one: regulate. Corps get special protections precisely so they can be regulated. Either we strip corps of intellectual property rights, or they get regulated. That's how it's meant to be. But money has bought everyone into thinking the 90's didn't exist.
More of us developers should quit dealing with Apple until they have a more open policy. People are jumping through hoops and having careers ruined at the whim of Apple so they can maintain their monopoly store. If we don't make stuff for that store, they will have to change. As long as we jump through the hoops they make their money and will not care at all that one of the most beloved games isn't on IOS because the developer had some self respect.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadIt would be interesting to hear Panic's input here. They're a long-time Mac studio, surely they've got some suggestions for regulators.
I guess even when Apple close all the loopholes to running "unauthorized" software there will be people silly enough to buy their computers.
EDIT: Guys, you can literally just install using Steam or Epic. It's really not a problem.
I guess it's not exactly a laptop monopoly, but a walled laptop monopoly alright.
Not really. The point is less about market positioning and more about building fair platforms. Apple wants to frame themselves as an underdog competitor in the global economy, but they fail because they can't even build a fair or open platform when given total freedom to do so. This "failure" has made them a lot of money, but it's also come to the detriment of users everywhere, whether they know it or not. The law exists explicitly to push companies like Apple along when they get too fat and rest on their Carnegie laurels.
> The alternatives to going through the App Store are really not viable.
Someone ought to tell the Mac people this, they'll be heartbroken.
> In this one small market Apple exerts its market dominance influence to take a lot of money from 3rd party developers. Of course this is small potatoes compared to all the other markets that they compete in and even as a fraction of their revenue.
Last year Apple made more from services than they did from iPhone hardware. That's not just a "fraction" anymore.
This whole strange fascination with claiming Apple is a monopoly is just silly. There is at least one major competitor to Apple in the mobile market (said competitor actually dominates that market by a huge margin) and literally dozens in the PC market. Apple isn't a monopoly, and it doesn't have to let competitors distribute their products within its own ecosystem.
Let's keep following in this thread. So if Ford created a 3rd-party battery pack, Tesla isn't legally allowed to prevent customers from replacing their battery pack with the Ford (or an Our Next Energy (ONE), who actually sells a) pack. Similarly, Ford has no legal standing to stop you if you buy a gasoline F-150, gut the motor and fuel tank, and install a Tesla motor and battery from a salvage title Model S.
This goes even further. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act from 1975 explicitly says Tesla isn't allowed to deny warranty coverage just because you used aftermarket or recycled parts, or went to a non-Tesla authorized auto shop for routine maintenance or repairs.
You don't own the iPhone you paid for, and the inability to install apps, with root permissions, is reason number 1 why. Meanwhile, you can actually take a wrench to a Ford F-150 all you want.
The Mac App Store is not a monopoly. Mac developers can independently distribute their apps.
https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/unsigned.html
As I mentioned, Mac developers can independently distribute their own apps, signed with a Developer ID certificate.
It's annoying to be sure, but not a major hurdle for professional Mac developers, such as Panic.
It's fascinating you made a 180 on the issue while it got worse since you wrote it.
I could bet that in under 5 years Apple will refuse to "notarize" at least some software and prevent unsigned software from running altogether.
How so?
Now you're saying it's all good. Go figure.
I've been philosophically opposed to Gatekeeper since its introduction more than 10 years ago, and that hasn't changed.
The mostly good news is that Apple mostly doesn't prevent non-malware developers from distributing their apps on the Mac. I'm aware of only 2 cases where Apple has intentionally abused its authority there: (1) Apple canceled the developer account of Epic Games after the famous trial. (2) Apple canceled the developer account of Kapeli after an allegation of App Store review fraud. However, the account was later restored, and Dash for Mac is currently signed and notarized. https://kapeli.com/dash
A monopoly is not defined by 100% control. It is defined by whom has the overwhelming control.
Government regulators aren't going to get involved over $100.
> As of Ventura you cannot bypass gatekeeper without a signature for a number of popular solutions. Electron being one of them.
I'm not sure what you mean. I'm not sure you technically understand what you mean.
Mac Ventura only allows for "App store and identified developers". Meaning the application must be signed with an apple developer cert to go through gatekeeper.
This has nothing to do with Ventura. It's been true for many years.
Keep in mind that I am personally a professional Mac developer. You're out of your depth here.
You can do so the same way you always could. Perhaps you're mixing it up with ARM Macs requiring code to be signed by something? (it doesn't have to be by an Apple certificate). You can still run self-signed code on macOS even with Apple Silicon and the latest OS versions and there's no sign they'll ever change that. Our distribution tool Conveyor will self-sign apps for you out of the box and create a web page that tells users what to do [1], albeit we should make it less wordy.
> Apple developer license is apart of the app store
A Developer ID is separate from the app store, they're different certificate types. I distribute Mac software outside the store with one, no problem.
[1] example: https://downloads.hydraulic.dev/eton-sample/selfsigned/downl...
Which makes sense, if all I had to do is sign some malware, that doesn't prevent me from spreading malware.
So if there is some method of this, it would be cool to know. I'll have to do some experiments.
You help build one walled garden, you get kicked out of another.
Regulators?
On iOS, if Apple's store rejected them, there's no recourse. Apple blocks other stores from existing, and there's no competition in distribution, review, and of course payments and the cut.
Which is why I was asking about regulators.
> On iOS if Apple's store rejects you, that's game over.
Everyone knows this, it doesn't need to be said. But fewer people are familiar with the Mac situation.
Cabel Sasser emailed Phil Schiller ideas on the app review process in 2016. A good chunk of it wound up getting implemented. I'd love to see a sequel.
Unrelatedly, I think the tone in his email is a perfect example of giving successful constructive criticism.
It did?
1) "When we decided to pull Coda from the App Store (due to sandboxing)"
Sandboxing is still required.
2) "we regained our ability to release software the moment we need to"
Nope, nothing has changed there.
3) "we could fill a small book with frustrating and tragicomic App Review anecdotes"
This was written before the Untitled Goose Game rejections.
4) "Reviews are often the dumping ground of the uninformed"
Still painfully true!
5) Refunds: "And when this happens, we can do nothing."
Still true. Developers can't issue their own refunds, and the App Store doesn't even have an official refund policy. I've been seeing more and more people get their App Store refund requests rejected by Apple, for no apparent reason.
6) Low app prices
Still a problem of course!
[0] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/ratings-and-reviews/
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204084
[2] https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=84w3e5bm
This was just about the least Apple could do. You can't have a conversation, you can only post one reply. And in my experience, App Store reviewers almost never correct their bad reviews, even if you reply with info that will fix their problem.
> Apple moved away from the "no refunds" policy
Apple still has no official refund policy. You can request a refund, which Apple may or may not grant, as I mentioned, at Apple's own discretion, for any reason or no reason. So I don't see how anything has changed from Cabel's email.
> completely stopped holding up bug fixes over guideline infractions
Completely wrong. What happens is that App Review still rejects your bug fix updates. But then you can request that App Review let your update go through, and fix the problem in the next update. The problem is that this can still take an indefinite amount of time, because App Review can reject you at any time, even when you're asleep, then you have to contact them, then they have to see your message and respond, all of which can take half a day or more. It's a joke. We're still delayed.
The other day my app got a 1-star customer review titled "Monthly subscriptions ain't it" and saying "0/5 now that it's subscription based."
My app is not subscription based, it's upfront paid.
This is the crap that developers have to deal with all the time in the App Store.
The crowdsourced rating/review system is a blight.
After their initial announcement of the policy, Apple clarified that they would still reject bugfixes if the app violated section 5 of the guidelines, the section titled "Legal". On the surface, this would seem reasonable. After all, can't go violating legal requirements. However, this is still counter to the spirit of what they had promised. If it's up on the store already, if it's violating the law (e.g. for scamming users out of money), it should be taken down. If it's not violating the law, it's better that customers get the bugfix.
They also copied a bunch of rules from the other sections into section 5, to give themselves more leeway.
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#leg...
Nothing about apples behavior is "win win". They're a corp that benefits from special protections against both civil and criminal liabilities as well as benefitting from masses of intellectual property. It's not some sort of balanced game, the scales were tipped completely into corpo land since early 2000s
In a way it's kind of good to know that there is no special treatment, but this is poor behaviour towards the developers who made your platform.
And why shouldn't they get the same treatment? Fair's fair.
At least, Apple certainly thought so. Not every developer gets a spotlight.
(Mac & iOS) [1]
2003, 2004, 2005(x2), 2013, 2021
Perhaps Apple was overselling how good they are? /s
[1] https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Panic
So if I were Tim Apple, I would be a little worried by someone like Sasser saying "we tried to launch our crazy popular game on your App Store and ultimately didn't because one of your idiot reviewers gave us the runaround." That's a little like, I don't know, some record label passing on Nirvana because a junior talent scout thought that "the guys looked kind of greasy and the name sounds stupid."
This is because App Store reviewers are ignorant of Mac history and of most everything else, as evidenced by their frequently brain-dead rejections. (I say this as an App Store developer myself.)
Microsoft's App Store reviewers are vendor staff from the same agencies that provide fungible CSR staff - the App Store reviewers I personally know are all good people (and it's unfair of me to put them in the same category as CSR workers) buuuuuut they aren't all computer culture historians. So I assume it's similar at Apple (though I gather Apple prefers to have FTEs under their direct control instead of using agencies?)
Now I'm curious how Apple handles the reportedly higher-than-average employee churn in those roles, as I heard that 6-18 months was a typical stint at MS's App Store reviews office at TEKSystems on Willows Rd - though I know people that stayed in that job for over 6 years, but they were never able to transition into a blue-badge role and were stuck as Orange Badges - which just isn't right.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/23/15399438/apple-uber-app-s...
If anything, they should make iOS more like this with the App Store only being the best content.
If I have the choice of delivering my product for free versus paying Apple a 30% cut, I'm going free every time.
The only people who would willingly pay the vig are those who are desperate for publicity.
The bigger piece of background is that Untitled Goose Game is (previously unbeknownst to me) a wildly successful game. I think the point he's getting across is that first the game was rejected for something trivially stupid (not being able to skip credits, which you could actually do), and then again for something probably equally trivially stupid (point being Cabel couldn't even remember it, and they apparently took a "this is BS, why bother?" approach). It's like if some NFL team had the ability to pick a star quarterback in the NFL draft but decided against it because they didn't like his shoelaces or something.
Point of the post is that the Mac Store review process is so arbitrary that successful developers just take the approach of "Why bother?"
I haven’t seen it.
Only the US DoJ or FTC could make a dent in this joke of a review process.
I feel like enforcement is rather random though. It seems like submitting updates draws their attention.
But you could be right. It may be it's a rule they abandoned.
In any case I don't think there's anyone around with the heart to try again.
Many Mac App Store games have not been ported to Apple Silicon yet (or ever, likely).
In any case, try downloading Steam Link, currently the #2 free game, and you should be able to see that it's Intel-only.
% file "/Applications/Steam Link.app/Contents/MacOS/Steam Link" /Applications/Steam Link.app/Contents/MacOS/Steam Link: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
... But also, Apple's space to lose in.
People don't want a computer or smartphone, they want the things those devices afford them.
From a security perspective, the much vaunted "general purpose computing" reduces to "arbitrary code execution". It's very dangerous, and without some sort of allowlist-based restriction on what may be run on the average consumer's hardware, it becomes a playground for hackers, thieves, and malicious state actors.
The era of general purpose computing with consumer hardware is dead. Millions of customers are delighted with their restricted devices. Stop whining and move on with your lives, people.
They're entitled to it, I say. Hell, I even think other companies are entitled to make it for them.
What they cannot do is turn this layer of abstraction into an excuse for infinite profitability. People don't want coffee makers, they want coffee! That doesn't mean Keurig is necessarily allowed to stop other people from selling pods, though. Especially if they become the primary way that people get their coffee. We have a democratically controlled legal system that holds these people in check - particularly when the market doesn't behave. You can still be right here, but if Apple is taking advantage of this situation to fleece people beyond what can be considered reasonable, then we have to litigate them regardless. Hopefully in the future, Apple finds a way to prioritize things like security while also respecting the user's choice and agency.
It's time for armchair analysts and AAPL investors to take a hike. Some of us want Apple to succeed regardless of their monopolistic intent, and helping them requires us to prune their ugliest branches. We staved off half a decade of change with this "free market will fix things" mantra, and nothing improved. If Apple won't do what's right, then we'll be forced to.
The market is "computers" and if Apple tightens its grip too far, they run people off to another solution. Everything else is economics as far as the American system is concerned.
The American system led us to a situation where Apple's global presence is exploitative. If Apple wants to get increasingly petty with their compliance, global regulators are apt to get increasingly petty with their regulation. Considering how Apple shrugged off Dutch regulators, it shouldn't surprise people when EU commissions move in with bigger demands. If those demands are unreasonable, then maybe Apple can run off to another market.
Nobody will stop you from framing this as a free market issue, but it's a comically small piece of the puzzle.
This leaves us with your previous observaation
> If Apple won't do what's right, then we'll be forced to.
And I agree. And in a (mostly) free-market system structure like the US, the solution is obvious... There's a reason I haven't used Apple as my primary compute platform for approximately 15 years.
Without a GP computer? That's a pretty large ask on a developer's site.
Imagine having to ID yourself to be allowed to install and use privacy software. What the actual fuck? "Privacy is a human right" is about as sincere as "don't be evil" these days.
Apple is slowly boiling the frog; every year there are more APIs in the OS that you can't use unless you are distributing via the MAS, which demands a phone number for an Apple ID even to download free apps.
I wish the FTC would come down hard on them, but unfortunately Apple has too much money and is too important of a bargaining chip in the coming Chinese trade war.
Delete your Apple ID. Opt out.