
Apple Pulling High-Grossing Scammy Offer Subscription Apps Off the App Store - wallflower
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2018/10/17/apple-pulling-high-grossing-subscription-apps-with-scammy-offers-off-the-app-store/
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paulgb
I can understand (even if I remain skeptical) how Facebook and Twitter claim
to be unable to deal with prolific abuse patterns, but how the hell does Apple
write a $14MM check to a scammy top-100 app[1] without some human checking
that it's legit?

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/15/sneaky-subscriptions-
are-p...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/15/sneaky-subscriptions-are-plaguing-
the-app-store/)

~~~
lacker
Well, that’s probably exactly what happened, and now Apple is cracking down on
this sort of app. They can’t just refuse to pay out that $14 mil to the app
developer - these are bad user experiences that trick people into agreeing to
subscriptions, but they aren’t clearly illegal. Apple does need to go through
their own app review process when they want to boot an app, making sure there
is a clear rule the app is not following.

~~~
paulgb
It sounds like they're only cracking down after getting bad press.

> They can’t just refuse to pay out that $14 mil to the app developer - these
> are bad user experiences that trick people into agreeing to subscriptions,
> but they aren’t clearly illegal.

I haven't read the developer agreement but I'd be surprised if it's written in
such a way that they don't have any discretion here. Just because it's not
illegal doesn't mean it doesn't violate Apple's terms.

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justkez
I feel like this has been some months in the making. We have an IAP enabled
app ([https://www.bestcoffee.guide/app](https://www.bestcoffee.guide/app))
just turned a year old. When we launched last year we had no issues with our -
very clear - subscription page.

Subsequent updates, however, have required closer and closer adherence to the
specifics of the Apple iap guidelines. All the boiler plate text needed to be
displayed, the button needs the price on it, and to be on the same page.

Overall a good change for the user but man it makes it hard to design a
remotely aesthetic subscription page.

~~~
Endy
As a user, I genuinely don't care about your aesthetic when it comes to your
IAPs. I want a clear-as-day notice well in advance that you're asking to take
real money for non-physical goods and/or services. If some group is working to
make that clearer, I'm in favor.

~~~
MOARDONGZPLZ
Seconded. I am very careful to make sure that I don't spend money unexpectedly
in apps, and it can be pretty difficult. I'm all for any guidelines or
regulations that make knowing when I'm going to be charged more explicit.

~~~
MiddleEndian
Payments should be client controlled. Rather than you giving online
organizations your payment information, they should request payments from you
and you could manually approve or reject them. You could give certain trusted
organizations you trust an auto accept option (for instance monthly web
hosting bills).

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Endy
"...while his app offered real value -- unlike many of the other apps caught
in this App Store review change..."

Does anyone else find this comment as highly dubious and scummy as I do?
Because it definitely feels to me like Mr. Koetsier isn't reporting
objectively about a user-focused policy change, but rather just telling us
that he's upset because his friend's subscription scam didn't work out thanks
to Apple actually policing its Store in the users' favor.

~~~
bdcravens
No, because of the rest of the sentence:

"...the subscription flow would have easily saddled people with subscription
charges that they might not have known about."

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convery
Good, an older friend of mine that barely knows how to access the appstore got
charged 70€ a month without having any idea why.

~~~
wpietri
This stuff makes my blood boil. However much I appreciate free markets in
general (which is quite a bit) I don't think vulnerable users should be
sacrificed on an ideological altar. Good for Apple stepping up here.

~~~
briandear
Actually both of your positions aren’t contradictory. Free markets are
predicated on free flows of information: fully informing people of what they
are potentially buying or agreeing to is not inconsistent with free markets.
I’d argue that misleading information is really not a free market thing at
all, quite the contrary.

If your app is worth the money, you should gladly accept the price. The fact
that some apps use “tricks” means that their app isn’t worth what is being
asked.

~~~
wpietri
I'd personally agree, but a great many people who claim to be for free markets
are in practice for unregulated markets. Their theory is that the invisible
hand will optimize all things. To me that sounds more like an invisible magic
sparkle pony.

Having worked for financial traders, I got to see up close that some of our
most effective markets are very tightly regulated, and for good reason. If a
market participant can trust the deals on offer, trades are fast and frequent,
and sellers compete on dimensions like price and quality. But if a seller can
do well by scamming, that not only harms the people they trade with, but the
market itself, in that trust is reduced. That raises costs for all buyers
(because they have to do more verification work before each trade), and puts a
burden on all sellers (because they have to work harder to prove they're not
evil). It also reduces turnover, as increased risk means fewer deals done.

So for me the question is how we get a free flow of accurate information. I
think the obvious answer is tight regulation with a willingness to sanction
deceptive actors. But for a lot of people, and they seem especially common
here, that kind of regulation is anathema, as to them it's the opposite of
"free".

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nawtacawp
In this same vein, apps that goto v2 then v3 under new app names (i.e
Omnifocus) also feel a bit scammy. I understand the monetize angle, but they
could be alienating users with large repurchase fees.

~~~
xoa
Can you please expand your reasoning about this? Developing major new versions
of software costs money, it has never been the case in the entire history of
the computer market that one general retail purchase of commercial software
would get you all updates of all kinds forever. It's normal that all minor
updates are free, and the next major version is a paid upgrade at a marginal
difference to full retail. This is economics that both matches people's common
sense ("I'm paying for the improvements and another period of minor support,
but not what I already paid for") and has favorable economic incentives
(upgrades are not guaranteed, the developer does in fact need to convince
people it's worth it).

In one of Apple's biggest most stupid and infuriating utter fuckups of all
time with the App Store, they eliminated this whole mechanism by offering no
upgrade support. But the need to get ongoing revenue for updated versions
didn't go away, so devs do what is allowed within Apple's stupid system. They
either make it subscription, or they create a "new" app where the major
version number is part of the name and sell it again, maybe averaging out the
price (or offering a reduced fee for the first week say), or some other
suboptimal system (new features get introduced incrementally as IAPs say).

It's not even the slightest remotest bit "scammy" though. To take your own
example OmniFocus v3 is a major update following years and years of support of
v2, it's completely reasonable it'd be a paid upgrade. And the Mac version, on
Omni's store, is a paid upgrade (or a free upgrade if you bought it in the
last year, outside of Apple's garbage market you can do stuff like that) for
owners of v2 (they can keep using v2 of course). It's just "OmniFocus"
regardless though, this is hardly some weird thing. It's just that on the App
Store they are forced by Apple to do something else.

~~~
nawtacawp
The issue is how the process is perceived by the user. The average user is not
going to understand why a new app has to be installed/purchased. It is
perceived by mass as a bit scammy. Personally, I would rather pay a yearly
subscription similiar to adobe than to have to repurchase every new update.

~~~
rayiner
> The issue is how the process is perceived by the user

Goddamn kids. Paying for “Omnifocus 3” seems totally intuitive to me. Paying
for major version updates is just how things were back before free/ad-
sponsered crap killed the market for software.

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tgb
How can Apple let people accidentally make purchases? Wouldn't anything
charging to your credit card need an Apple pop-up with the listed price/rate
to appear and you to accept it? I know people click "OK" to anything, but this
seems obvious. I don't use an iPhone, so I'm not sure how it works but it
seems pretty sketchy to allow apps to make arbitrary charges without any user
confirmation.

~~~
wool_gather
This is probably part of the reason that the payment popup became much more
obtrusive (and incidentally nicer) in iOS 11. It doesn't look like a normal
alert anymore.

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briandear
Apple themselves should promote their own native features more. For example,
the built-in Notes app has fantastic document scanning already built in.
Paying for a document scanning app is just mindless (generally.)

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variable11
Why did it take so long? Scummy apps have existed for years.

~~~
tempodox
Not only apps. There is a reason why the principle of “caveat emptor” was
already known to the Romans.

And your question is answered by the article: Now, Apple might get bad press
over it.

