And yet, I’m still waiting for them to approve my developer account, It’s been two months now. they seriously need to be broken up and allow other app stores and ways to developer for their hardware.
If you're logging in from a country that historically has had a lot of fraud coming from it, this might be the reason why.
When travelling in Hungary my AWS account was banned the moment I tried to log in. I got basically no reason. I was able to call support but the guy very polite fobbed me off and I got the idea that they weren't even able to disclose the reason why they banned me.
No detailed reason given. Also no info from the developer on what they might have done to trigger this, so basically, except for “Apple terminated this account”, we don’t know what happened.
All we can complain about is that Apple’s rejection letters never go into detail. I’m afraid that’s what you get when the legal department of a large corp is involved.
Apple really are the poster child for "Stallman was right". When things are broken with their software you just have to hope that an update or relogging will magically fix things. You aren't even allowed to write your own software for the hardware you own without their permission. Terrible
Something is happening right now at Apple, as I have seen another post on reddit about that (could not find it), where people complained about their Dev Accounts were banned as well, when they even did not have any apps, just used dev accounts to notarize apps for themselves.
"not [...] interfere with [...] Ad-Hoc distribution, or the Program [...]"
Obviously his email was an interference with the "Program" (Apple Developer Program). It probably had consumed an Apple employee's time, or that of an AI.
Imagine the EU or any government being in the position of saying to Apple: "You did not adhere to our terms xyz, therefore we terminate our granted permission for you to operate in this region. Please remove all tools you use to operate in this region and release the premises for other companies to use them, immediately", without explaining why. Because this is what Apple is doing.
I remember an /r/AskReddit thread years ago about 'What's your favourite free smartphone app?' (or something along those lines) and the comment that most stuck in my mind was from an iPhone user lamenting how many interesting and novel things were only available on Android, because publishing for iOS was simply too hard.
This isn't to say that the Google Play Store is intrinsically better than Apple's App Store; Google is equally guilty of this what's the cheapest thing we can pass off as due diligence? nonsense. However, it is a good reminder that this sort of thing has been going on for a long time, and is only getting worse.
I think the idea of the smartphone as a general-purpose computing machine is dead, and that instead phones are now the designated Muggle-safe Internet consumption platform. Apart from media streaming, ordinary people aren't using computing machinery for anything they weren't using it for twenty years ago, so I think they won't feel any loss from the stagnation of mobile apps.
The lessons for HN readers are: a) app stores exist within their platform's moat; and b) don't build your business inside someone else's moat.
I bought a used MacBook air from my colleague to give to my girlfriend. It's the first apple device I've owned for more than a decade.
I was expecting smooth sailing. From afar it's supposed to be so well integrated and smooth.
What we experienced was the opposite. Even just the experience in macOS feels extremely janky. Lots of different UI paradigms, lack of feedback when logging into your apple account when it doesn't work in some cases.
Anyway, we updated everything and my gf even purchased something almost immediately - a nearly 100 dollar license for software from the app store.
She puts the laptop away for a couple of days and then we want to use it in the kitchen.. and we are told there's an issue with the account. We end up logging in online where we are finally told that its been blocked and we need to verify it. Whatever, I thought, it's probably just some filter. We verify with phone number and are told we'll need to wait a couple of days.
The result is that her apple id is just banned, and there is no recourse. No one can tell us anything at all except that we broke the terms of service. They can't even refund our purchase because they literally can't find our account in their system. We're literally instructed to do a charge back.
So we end up using another apple id that my girlfriend had, which she had forgotten about since it was only used for Apple tv... And it doesn't work. We are unable to login with it, and when we go online, we enter some sort of verification flow.. which just breaks. The final step is a website with a button which literally doesn't do anything when you press it. Except it does - it sends a request and I can see it return a 500.
We end up having to talk to support on the phone and they tell us this is all intentional, and he just needs to flip a switch in his system and we're good to go.
Literally the most asinine experience I've ever had with any tech company. Also the last time I'm buying anything Apple.
While that experience is horrible, the fact that you were actually able to talk to support and that support was actually able to solve the problem puts it above the experience with pretty much any other tech giant.
Well-known risk of making your livelihood dependent on a company that's consistently demonstrated that, as you would expect, it doesn't care about you or any of your concerns, and will screw you on a whim.
It's pretty crap that Apple won't explain the reasons. I can understand with something like a free facebook account where there isn't any money to pay for people to explain things but being an Apple dev generally involves paying hundreds of dollars to Apple and in return they should at least be prepared to talk to you.
21 comments
[ 977 ms ] story [ 1254 ms ] threadWhen travelling in Hungary my AWS account was banned the moment I tried to log in. I got basically no reason. I was able to call support but the guy very polite fobbed me off and I got the idea that they weren't even able to disclose the reason why they banned me.
All we can complain about is that Apple’s rejection letters never go into detail. I’m afraid that’s what you get when the legal department of a large corp is involved.
https://old.reddit.com/r/iOSProgramming/s/oUVIuVWeJe
Hearing tales like these makes me super nervous. I don't think there's anything I can do to protect my app/account.
It does suck, A LOT
Obviously his email was an interference with the "Program" (Apple Developer Program). It probably had consumed an Apple employee's time, or that of an AI.
Imagine the EU or any government being in the position of saying to Apple: "You did not adhere to our terms xyz, therefore we terminate our granted permission for you to operate in this region. Please remove all tools you use to operate in this region and release the premises for other companies to use them, immediately", without explaining why. Because this is what Apple is doing.
This isn't to say that the Google Play Store is intrinsically better than Apple's App Store; Google is equally guilty of this what's the cheapest thing we can pass off as due diligence? nonsense. However, it is a good reminder that this sort of thing has been going on for a long time, and is only getting worse.
I think the idea of the smartphone as a general-purpose computing machine is dead, and that instead phones are now the designated Muggle-safe Internet consumption platform. Apart from media streaming, ordinary people aren't using computing machinery for anything they weren't using it for twenty years ago, so I think they won't feel any loss from the stagnation of mobile apps.
The lessons for HN readers are: a) app stores exist within their platform's moat; and b) don't build your business inside someone else's moat.
I bought a used MacBook air from my colleague to give to my girlfriend. It's the first apple device I've owned for more than a decade.
I was expecting smooth sailing. From afar it's supposed to be so well integrated and smooth.
What we experienced was the opposite. Even just the experience in macOS feels extremely janky. Lots of different UI paradigms, lack of feedback when logging into your apple account when it doesn't work in some cases.
Anyway, we updated everything and my gf even purchased something almost immediately - a nearly 100 dollar license for software from the app store.
She puts the laptop away for a couple of days and then we want to use it in the kitchen.. and we are told there's an issue with the account. We end up logging in online where we are finally told that its been blocked and we need to verify it. Whatever, I thought, it's probably just some filter. We verify with phone number and are told we'll need to wait a couple of days.
The result is that her apple id is just banned, and there is no recourse. No one can tell us anything at all except that we broke the terms of service. They can't even refund our purchase because they literally can't find our account in their system. We're literally instructed to do a charge back.
So we end up using another apple id that my girlfriend had, which she had forgotten about since it was only used for Apple tv... And it doesn't work. We are unable to login with it, and when we go online, we enter some sort of verification flow.. which just breaks. The final step is a website with a button which literally doesn't do anything when you press it. Except it does - it sends a request and I can see it return a 500.
We end up having to talk to support on the phone and they tell us this is all intentional, and he just needs to flip a switch in his system and we're good to go.
Literally the most asinine experience I've ever had with any tech company. Also the last time I'm buying anything Apple.
The bar is so low these days...