
Apple is threatening to terminate my developer account with no clear reason - bpg_92
https://www.andyibanez.com/posts/please-help-apple-threatening-terminate-apple-developer-account/
======
BiteCode_dev
And Apple is not even an isolated case.

Google will close gmail accounts, take away adsense revenues, or remove
youtube videos on a whim.

Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided
didn't aligned with their view of the world.

For years Microsoft made it super hard to buy hardware without paying the
Windows licence. They killed xbox remotely. They have invasive telemetry in
Win 10.

Paypal may refuse to pay the money you have on their account at any moment.
Your money, no appeal.

Twitter and facebook censorship rules are on a case by case basis. If your
famous, you may be able to use hate speech. I you are an anonymous political
activist, China may ask for your shut down.

Big companies exist to make money. If they get too much power, they will abuse
it. Not because they are evil, but because it's the logical thing to do for
them.

This is why I was advocating in another comment that we should not use
WhatsApp new payment system:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23553455](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23553455)

Thinking about the power we give to big entities is a central mechanism to
build the society we live on. That's why we should think about what we buy,
the media we consumme, etc.

They are votes, just as much as during an election.

~~~
ksec
>Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided
didn't aligned with their view of the world.

That is why I am absolutely against abolishing paper cash.

Edit: I know there are countries where you have a democratically elected
representatives and every part of the government and even companies is held (
more or less ) accountable to the people and does not need to worry ( much )
about big business or government taking over some basic right. Yes cashless in
that case is great. Is like utopian.

Unfortunately not everyone has that luxury.

~~~
kabacha
At one point abolishing paper cash is even remotely plausible? maybe in 100
years? So far cash rules majority of the world and I don't see it going away
any time soon.

~~~
chrisseaton
Cash is already going away in some countries.

Almost nobody pays for anything with cash in the UK anymore.

~~~
CydeWeys
Are you sure that applies generally, and not just to you and people like you?

~~~
chrisseaton
I don't live in the South East and I'm not in a tech bubble, if that's what
you mean.

~~~
rutthenut
I am in the South and use cash quite frequently, as do many other people I see
or know. I think your definition of 'almost nobody' may be more than you
appreciate.

>> Almost nobody pays for anything with cash in the UK anymore

------
bsaul
This kind of post infuriates me. As an iOS developer for 10 years, i can
guarantee you that there are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of stories
like that, with people getting shut down for no good reason, and having their
business killed.

It's now so bad people are refraining from trying out innovative business
model or apps just because they think there could be a chance someone at apple
validation wouldn't like it and kill the product at any time.

I wish the Hey story makes people realize it is not reasonable to have one
actor control the only software distribution channel to hundred of millions of
customers.

I'm fine with apple wanting to provide a highly curated experience to their
users by having them download apps from a store they control. But this
shouldn't be the _only_ option.

~~~
bnastic
> i can guarantee you that there are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of
> stories like that, with people getting shut down for no good reason, and
> having their business killed

How about Apple telling me they don't like my business bank (a well known UK
bank I've been with for 10 years) and simply refusing to set up the account.
In a very cold, "go away already", manner. I wasn't going to kill the
relationship with my business bank just because Apple told me to, so the app
never got onto App Store and I shut down my dev account.

~~~
kungato
OT: why do you care which bank you're in?

~~~
fsflover
Why would you allow Apple to decide which bank you must use?

~~~
kungato
My bank doesnt support Google Pay so I switched. Life is full of obstacles but
we should go around them and not through them. Only person you hurt in your
case is yourself. Or you didn't really want to bother with the whole thing
anyway so you stopped at the first issue

~~~
joshuaissac
The person you replied to is not the same one from the original story. And
there are many reasons to prefer one bank to another; in the poster's case,
switching to an Apple-supported bank might have introduced more obstacles to
go through than it would have avoided.

------
ratel
I keep reading these comments on HN of people trying to guess on what the
reason is Apple, Google or who else is terminating accounts, apps, videos or
monetizing opportunities. Usually accompanied by a tone of voice telling
people they should have known better. The point is: Your guess is as good as
mine.

The fact is that those companies are not telling people what they did wrong
and even more persuasive these days not explaining why their apparent
transgression is leading to a particular punishment. Or how that transgression
fits the punishment. I for one will not subject myself to such a form of
tyranny.

In this case even if having your app in TestFlight too long, why is now (3
years in) the time to revoke the app? Having 200 test users is too much. Why
not tell people beforehand they exceeded a limit if that is your rule?

Lets say you are invited into a country as a citizen, but the conditions are:
You can be punished arbitrarily, even banished, without recourse, harassed,
given arbitrary commands by minions. You pay a 30% tax on all your proceeds,
but your proceeds are your sole responsibility. There is no right to have your
grievances addressed by the tyrant, not even by one of the lower minions.
Would you go? I will not. Now say you already find yourself in such a country.
I'm sorry for you. I think I would organize and try to collectively have those
rights improved.

------
nromiun
> The big problem is that when Apple tells you that the reasons “are not
> limited” the ones they listed, it could be anything. They could call my face
> ugly and remove me from the Developer Program under that reason and tell me
> it was because of “fraud”.

<rant>

Seriously, just how hard is it for these companies to communicate properly?
Would it kill them to send something like "We saw X on your account so we are
closing your account temporarily. Contact us.". Instead it is just "We closed
your account. Get screwed.".

This is why so many developers are going the web app way these days. Dealing
with a closed platform who won't even talk to you is just infuriating.

Sorry for the rant.

~~~
morganvachon
> _Sorry for the rant._

Don't apologize, your rant is valid and unfortunately this issue is not
limited to Apple. Google is infamous for closing accounts and sending an
automated message along the lines of "You may have violated a rule. We won't
tell you which rule, and we won't offer proof, deal with it." They don't just
do this to their free users, it's happened to businesses using paid Google
services for their core infrastructure. It's maddening that a corporation can
get so big that it's effectively a human walking through an ant hill,
oblivious to the thousands or even millions of lives it's disrupting in the
name of moving forward and making profits.

~~~
ryandrake
Not defending, but look at it from the attacker's point of view: The more
information the target divulges about their process, the more accurate a
playbook you are able to develop about what kinds of attacks the target will
and won't allow.

When you type your password into your computer, if you do it incorrectly, you
get a generic error like "That didn't work, try again". If instead the OS gave
out more specific hints, like "Your username is good but your password isn't"
and "You tried 9 characters, but your password is not 9 characters", it would
only make things easier for the attacker.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I can only speak for myself, but I have had a number of interactions with the
review team, and I have _always_ ended up communicating with a human; although
they would often paste “talking points” into their replies.

Because of the nature of a couple of my apps, I’ve had them bounced for
“providing commonly available services” (i.e. competing with OS tools). In
each instance, I have appealed, citing some unique features, and have
prevailed.

I think that reviewers have a number of “1-button” responses, provided by some
kind of dashboard, in order to ensure a narrative is maintained. This is
actually common for many customer interaction scenarios. I don’t like it, but
understand why it happens.

I’ll bet that the more heated an exchange gets, the more “canned” these
responses become, because...lawyers. He may, in fact, be communicating with a
human, who keeps hitting canned response buttons (not much different from
‘bots).

I’ve wondered whether or not folks might use TestFlight for “shadow release.”
I have seen app makers use Enterprise in that fashion. I have no idea (or
opinion) on whether or not that was the case, here.

I’m not sure I would want to pursue my case in the court of public opinion.
It’s a risky gambit, but this chap may feel he has nothing to lose.

 _EDIT: One thing that I should mention, is that I never have a release in
TestFlight for more than a few days. It has a "time bomb"; I think, maybe 60
or 90 days. That means, in order to maintain an app in TF for three years,
he'd need to keep re-releasing every couple of months. That speaks to some
kind of intent._

~~~
reaperducer
_I’ve wondered whether or not folks might use TestFlight for “shadow
release.”_

They are. I know a real estate company that distributes its app to its
customers that way. I don't know why they do it, but it's annoying not to be
able to just download it from the App Store like a normal app.

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
_> I know a real estate company that distributes its app to its customers that
way._

That's insane. Their brand must be in the toilet. This guy has a "niche"
product that is probably only of interest to a few geeks. A real estate
company, on the other hand, has a brand that it needs to protect and project.

Also, I'll bet they will get to interact with the account fraud department,
sooner or later.

------
mhee
TestFlight has its limitations, unfortunately. It is not a distribution
platform, it is not intended to be active for longer than 90 days without
updates and should not be monetized

[https://developer.apple.com/app-
store/review/guidelines/#bet...](https://developer.apple.com/app-
store/review/guidelines/#beta-testing)

I encourage you to read through the entire AppStore guidelines, there might be
more sections that apply to Apple's decision to terminate the account

I didn't read through all of your privacy policy on the app's website, but
definitely worthwhile to cross check it with the AppStore guidelines as well.

~~~
xiphias2
I don't see the 90 days rule in those guidelines.

As others have said, GMail was 5 years in beta, it's normal for products to be
in beta for years as long as they are not monatized. Maybe he didn't get the
updates reviewed according to the guidelines though.

~~~
mhee
Yeah maybe this was it. Any significant changes must be reviewed again.

But from the way it sounds the author was not actively developing the
application, so I am not sure how many changes went into each 90 day revision,
perhaps Apple does not look kindly on resubmitting a build just for the sake
of resetting the TestFlight 90 day activity counter. This might be seen as a
way to try and avoid deployment and the final app review process.

The 90 day counter is mentioned here
[https://testflight.apple.com/](https://testflight.apple.com/) Look for it
under "Testing"

From the way I have understood the 90 day counter before is that the app
should be updated with new functionality/patches to be more beta tested,
otherwise your app is obviously not being developed so no need for beta
testing anymore

------
goblin89
For someone who’s considering getting into Apple Developer program: should
Apple Developer account be separate from primary Apple ID used across devices?

And if not, and a single Apple ID is also used for development, (1) can it
remain intentionally unassociated with any payment method in any specific
country, and (2) is there a threat of losing it if Developer account is
terminated for some unfathomable reason?

~~~
TheKarateKid
If your personal Apple ID is on most of your devices, absolutely.

If it’s a business ID then I’d still say you have little to lose by using a
separate one for the Dev account. You can even switch IDs on iOS for using the
App Store if you need to login using the dev account.

------
planb
An interesting spin of the story would be if Apple announced an intel to arm
migration kit called "Mignori" next week at WWDC...

------
sunaurus
I really hate this current reality of having to use social media channels for
a chance of proper customer support. Are there any initiatives that are
working against this? I would be happy to contribute to any kind of platform
or movement or whatever that aims to mitigate/fix this.

------
tsp
Apple’s decisions in the last 5 years are causing more and more of my
developer friends to move away. Bringing back the escape key on the MacBook
Pro won’t change that.

If Apple were not years behind PWA integration, switching to a PWA instead of
native app might be an option. But this is sadly not in Apple’s interest.

I wonder how many people will choose Android over Apple in the future because
of PWAs. I can imagine there will be a flood of useful PWAs, freely to use and
only fully working on Android, not Apple.

------
g_p
At this point I am hopeful (but not optimistic) that the EU
competition/antitrust investigation [1] might go somewhere and get an outcome.
The trouble with investigations like these, as we all know from previous
cases, is they tend to drag on rather than yield rapid outcomes.

In this case, it seems we've sleepwalked into a situation where there are
conflicts of interest like never really seen before - companies with global
scale, able to arbitrarily decide which competition they wish to allow to be
present on "their" marketplace, and make them either raise their price by 30%,
or be 30% less profitable.

Resolving these conflicts, and recognising these aren't simple "creation of a
moat", but rather some actual, tangible, anti-competitive practices would be a
good starting point. But what is the outcome? Apple's view is "we're
protecting users from bad things on the internet", but perhaps this kind of
arbitrary decision-making is not one to be getting made arbitrarily?

[1]
[https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_1073)

~~~
rimliu
We already have the cookie law. Do you need another gift from EU?

~~~
g_p
GDPR itself is a lot more than the "cookie law", and in my view most people
are mis-interpreting and mis-applying it. Any site that won't let you in
without accepting their tracking cookies is actually breaking GDPR.

If we enforced the law as written, I think the "cookie law" would be a net
positive for everyone.

In terms of who deals with the anti competitive situation, I don't think that
matters. But this is textbook market distortion that traditional antitrust
laws were made for, and I think it's high time we saw them used to break up
anti-competitive market practices.

------
mobiledev2014
"In the last few days, Next Anime Episode has started to receive an unusual
number of 1-Star reviews and all in a quick sucession, so I am starting to
think that someone is targetting me for god knows what reason"

Speculation but my money would be on some unethical competitor or even just a
jerk who doesn't like Andy is spamming negative reviews and reported him to
Apple for fraud. Since I've never heard of this happening, I don't know if
Apple's fraud department takes a guilty-until-innocent approach or if they
agreed fraud occurred. Either way the lack of transparency and communication
is not right. I'll echo sentiments that I've spoken to humans about app issues
but never about fraud.

------
aasasd
> _I know of developers who were instantly terminated and all their apps
> removed. Luckily this has not happened to me._

Well there you have it. The rest of devs will be happy they're still under
Apple's wing, and nothing will change.

------
traceroute66
The problem with all these "Apple is being nasty to me" stories that have been
appearing recently is that there appears to be a strong smell of "two sides to
every story".

I have not read the blog post above fully, but a speed-read suggests that the
author was publicly distributing an app through TestFlight rather than App
Store.

I am not accusing anyone of anything here. But _if_ my speed-read is accurate,
then its not at all surprising Apple have taken issue with him.

TestFlight is a dev tool. Its not for production deployment. Its meant for
beta testing.

~~~
bad_user
Author says that he develops app in his free time, did not have time to push
it to app store properly and that he has 200 beta testers. Apps with a public
invitation link for testing are common and if the delay is the problem here,
then Apple should have said so.

What's completely unacceptable here is that Apple does not specifically say
what the author did wrong and this can't be defended by apologists.

What is surprising or not coming from Apple is irrelevant, stop normalizing
this abusive behavior from app store gate keepers.

~~~
JimDabell
> Author says that he develops app in his free time, did not have time to push
> it to app store properly and that he has 200 beta testers. Apps with a
> public invitation link for testing are common and if the delay is the
> problem here, then Apple should have said so.

I agree that Apple’s lack of communication with developers is a massive
problem, but I also think there are a couple of gaps in his story that need
filling in.

TestFlight betas expire after a short amount of time – one or two months, if I
remember correctly. He says the application has been available through
TestFlight for three years. This means that he will have had to publish a new
build well over a dozen times to keep it active for this amount of time. And
if it’s already on TestFlight with external testers, it’s really not much
effort at all to push it live. The build is already in Apple’s system – you've
got to fill out a couple more form fields and click submit.

So looking at it that way… he gets hundreds of users, keeps pushing new builds
to those users on a regular basis for _three years_ , but never submits it to
go through the public App Store review process. If I were Apple, I’d think he
was probably trying to bypass the review process as well. Apps with a public
invitation link are common, but this behaviour is not.

But yes, they should talk to him about it and this is a failure on Apple’s
part even if he is acting suspiciously. I’ve been saying for a while that
Apple need a VP of Developer Relations to take ownership of this type of
thing, because it seems clear nobody owns it at the moment.

------
monokh
The consequence of playing in a walled garden.

Is there still no way to release an iPhone app out with the iOS app store?

~~~
sabujp
yes, you can i heard instacart for example uses their enterprise cert signed
app for their drivers/deliverers. Drivers are instructed to go into settings
and change things to allow loading that app

~~~
lukeramsden
I wouldn't call that an alternative to the App Store, as that's exactly what
the enterprise certs are for - internal distribution to employees (or more
likely in this case to be contractors but whatever). Getting regular users to
go in to settings and change things just to install your app is not feasible.

------
fareesh
From what I understand, in the free market system we consider things to be
anti-competitive, anti-consumer, etc. when a corporation has some kind of
market dominance acquired through earning the trust of consumers, and once
they have obtained that trust, they abuse it by imposing a set of self-serving
conditions on the market which serves their own interest in some way at the
cost of some other player in the market - either consumer or competitor or
someone else.

To enable this countries and regions have drafted laws to govern what business
and trade practices are permissible.

Some non-rhetorical questions out of curiosity because I genuinely don't know:

Is it illegal for supermarkets to only partner with certain brands and carry
their products over those of their competitors? If there is only 1 Walmart
within driving distance of 50,000 people, and that Wal-Mart chooses to throw
out all toilet paper brands and sell their store brand, is this allowed under
current law? What if they allow the brand to stay if they pay an additional
whimsical commission to Wal-Mart? Is that legal?

Is there something that makes the App store different from the physical store
equivalent?

Putting aside the letter of the law, does it violate the aforementioned
"spirit" of the law? i.e. ought there be laws against this kind of behaviour?
I am sure there are good arguments for both sides.

~~~
jedieaston
The App Store is different than in your example. In your example, I could put
up a store myself called Toilet Paper Warehouse, and probably be successful in
that town given that nobody else sells the toilet paper consumers desire.
Whereas if the App Store is Walmart, then the iPhone is the town, but the town
has a law on the books that says "No stores except Walmart can be in this
town!". Consumers don't get the toilet paper they value, and Walmart can
control the supply. In exchange, Walmart makes sure that nobody sells toilet
paper with poison ivy on it, and guarantees that residents will have to go to
the bathroom less than if they sold non-Walmart toilet paper.

The problem is that the iPhone itself isn't a monopoly. You can buy an Android
phone that can access any store and install any app you want, so monopoly law
doesn't apply (in the strictest sense). Now, one could say that you shouldn't
have to move towns just because your favorite toilet paper isn't sold. But as
it stands today, you have to, as I understand it. (With that being said,
Apple, start acting right.)

------
RNCTX
The article doesn't pass the smell test to me.

By his own description of what it does, I'd say the app is highly likely to be
selling access to content that the author hasn't licensed, and is on sketchy
copyright grounds.

Also, the fact that a vote manipulation app...

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-
democractic-...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-democractic-
caucus-voting-app-android-testfairy-screenshots-app-store)

...was distributed via a test platform with the financial backing of former
Clinton and Obama / recent Pete Buttigieg staffers...

[https://apnews.com/5232ce5601996c1de440806ad30fa4fb](https://apnews.com/5232ce5601996c1de440806ad30fa4fb)

...has likely put Apple in the position of being compelled to more actively
police what goes on in test apps. I get the knee-jerk tendency to blame
corporate oppression of indie developers since that is usually what we see
from the Googles and Microsofts of the world, but Apple has little monetary
interest in kicking a successful app developer off of their ecosystem, unless
that app developer is blatantly flaunting civil / criminal statutes or trying
to scam Apple out of their cut of the profit.

If I had a to guess I'd say this guy is doing both.

~~~
thomaslord
If you read the article, you'll find that the app itself doesn't even _link_
to any content by default and you have to explicitly enter a data source
yourself.

Also, I'd say referring to that app (however problematic it was, and I agree
they did a terrible job building and deploying it) as a "vote manipulation
app" is unnecessarily inflammatory.

> distributed via a test platform with the financial backing of former Clinton
> and Obama / recent Pete Buttigieg staffers This implies that TestFlight has
> financial backing from those groups. Maybe that's just unclear wording, but
> interpreted as written the claim is unsupported by the provided source.

Assuming you meant to say the Iowa caucus app was supported by those former
staffers, it should be clarified that the company who made the app also
provided services to those campaigns. I wouldn't consider Shadow Inc. to be
competent as a technology company, but it doesn't surprise me that Democrats
would buy political tech from a company founded by people who worked on
digital outreach for the most recent Democratic presidential campaign.

~~~
RNCTX
I read the article, I still think this is a fine line that overall points to a
nefarious intent, I suppose we can debate which one it is...

1) Desire to cut Apple out of their share by trying to monetize a test app

and/or

2) Desire to escape the review process which might flag and reject an app
designed to allow the user to easily fetch data from source that would be in
violation of copyright laws.

This is relevant to the political example for a similar reason. Sure, we can
say there's nothing wrong with the judge in a politician's criminal trial
being seen with the politician in a restaurant after the politician's
acquittal.... on the same day (look up Edwin Edwards and you'll see examples
of just that), but it certainly does look bad, doesn't it? Similarly we can
say that people from the vote counting app and their investors being seen in a
bar with the guy responsible for failing to count the votes is not necessarily
nefarious, but when the guy who counts the votes fails to count the votes in a
way that favors the candidate whose staffers were also at the same get
together at the same bar, it sure does look bad, doesn't it?

There's no reason for a guy with a successful app to fail to launch it and
monetize it, unless he's trying to skirt Apple's rules in some way. It's just
a matter of what way he's trying to game their system, isn't it?

------
LatteLazy
You get the same thing with YouTube creators (plus they get bogus or spurious
copyright flags with the same result). If we're going to have these big
platforms (and I'd include Steam, Amazon, YouTube etc) then we need to have
legislation giving their clients basic, non-waivable rights to a quick and
independent review and reasonable treatment. Sadly the law seems to be headed
in the opposite direction (requiring platforms to do more "moderation").

------
odshoifsdhfs
`While the first version of this app was on the App Store from 2014 to 2016, I
removed it in that last year because the app stopped working properly with
most Boorus, and it was broken for most users. Since then, I started
developing a new version called “Mignori 3”, which has never hit the App
Store. It has been on TestFlight for a while.`

So basically he was calling something a 'beta' and distributing it through
Testflight for 3 years.

Yep, no clear reason here. Big Apple bad!

Apple has a lot of problems, and I agree, but most of these 'developer stories
about mean Apple' always have two sides of the story. I remember the same
outrage about Kapeli's Dash situation, and then came out an account in his
name was doing fraudulent activities (
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12680131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12680131)
)

~~~
chris_wot
So it was in beta for three years. What of it? That's hardly fraudulent. If
something is in beta, then it's... in beta. He wasn't selling it.

~~~
odshoifsdhfs
He was using Testflight to distribute it on his website. This has been a nono
to do for a long time. You may not agree with it, but them are the rules.

~~~
chris_wot
You are speculating though. Do you know for sure that is the fraudulent
activity that Apple are referring to?

~~~
odshoifsdhfs
No, I can't say for sure, but it is _A_ reason to terminate the account, and
since this post is called 'Apple is threatening to terminate my developer
account with no clear reason' I believe it is the case. We will never know the
real reason as Apple probably won't provide it, but there is a violation of
their rules, even if the termination was because something else, they are
still entitled to close it based on the violation.

~~~
chris_wot
I do t see why it is so hard for Apple to explain what in particular he was
doing wrong.

------
jpalomaki
Might be that they just don’t like the idea of image board browser. Apple is
somewhat strict on what kind of content the apps are providing to user (See
”Objectionable Content” [1])

Techically this is of course just like web browser, but Apple could see it
differently.

[1] Objectionable Content

~~~
kalleboo
Then you reject the app in App Review, not terminate the account for "Fraud"

------
read_if_gay_
Where are the people arguing that it’s fine because private companies can do
whatever they want?

------
taylus
> All the skills I have built over the course of almost a decade are obsolete
> now, because I do not imagine myself working for other people as an iOS dev
> without having my own hobby iOS apps on the App Store. It feels like all the
> blogging I have been doing has been a waste because I cannot participate in
> the knowledge I myself write, and it’s pointless to engage in the knowledge
> of others if I cannot try what they write.

The fact that a faceless entity can lock you out of developing like this is
just wrong. I fear for the future of such closed off ecosystems.

------
Aeolun
Oh FFS, well, up to the top you go. Maybe someone at Apple will see this and
poke their friends in App Store Review or something.

We really shouldn’t have to do that kind of shit.

------
coder1001
Startup idea for anyone who is interested:

Paid customer service where the customer pays money (say $100-$1k depending on
how serious the issue is) and each company can have a special channel to
respond to these paid requests and be compensated (say 80% of the fee the
customer pays). That way companies will have the will and ability to attend to
serious issues and filter them out from the "useless" customer requests that
flood any large size business.

~~~
dragonwriter
The companies that want to sell dedicated support and the people who want to
buy it are already selling and buying it. And since, outside of FOSS that the
customer controls hosting of, and some other special cases, only the original
vendor, with whom the user will have interacted to get the software, will be
able to provide support, so there's not a lot of matchmaking/discovery to be
done to justify a middleman taking a cut.

------
nablaone
Irony. You can publish a book without a publisher right now. But you have to
rely on publisher will if you want to publish an app.

------
lcnmrn
We need third party app stores and there should be a section on the Apple App
Store dedicated for installing these.

~~~
vaxman
This.

------
dhsysusbsjsi
I once had Apple reject an iOS app update citing IP violations because we had
an in-app settings page using a stock UITableViewController with default
UITableViewCells with UISwitch in the accessory view (on the right) and
vanilla text. Literally no styling.

Apparently it looked too much like the iPad Settings app.

Insane.

------
cryptica
That's why I often don't bother with Apple. If it doesn't work on OSX or iOS,
too bad. People have to learn that Apple is not good for them or for society
and I'm happy to make my products unavailable to Apple users to help them to
learn that valuable life lesson.

Just find an alternative business strategy that doesn't rely on Apple. You
can't rely on them. They don't give a crap about developers and never have.
Why do all developers keep enabling them? Seriously, just sacrifice a small %
of your income by ignoring Apple and you will help make the world a better
place. Developers have to stand up for themselves.

------
Razengan
I specifically opened HN just now to see if there were any negative posts
about Apple, given that WWDC is in a few days, and like clockwork, there it
is.

~~~
skoskie
What are you implying?

------
lawrenceong
here's my thought on the "raging" debate -- what if, just what if, we are free
to set up "stores" where our computing devices can connect to without
liability and with the same level of complexity as with the default one being
offered up? walled gardens create opportunities for abuse, which,
unfortunately for us hapless developers, impose yet another level of
bureaucracy.

------
zepto
We do need legislation here.

I would suggest requiring cause to be stated for account termination or
threatened termination, and a formal right of appeal to request evidence.

Of course this would be onerous for the smallest businesses, so we’d need some
threshold for when it kicks in. E.g. 2 years, or $1,000 of transactions.

This wouldn’t make any particular kind of termination illegal. It would simply
force transparency, so that then if there really are abuses or patterns of
abuse taking place, we can expose them.

It would also apply to all businesses - Google, Banks, Gyms, whatever.

------
wprapido
Had a horror experience with PayPal. Lost tons of cash. Getting paid became
incredibly difficult.

------
sabujp
where is this ? [https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/13/tech/apple-app-store-
supreme-...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/13/tech/apple-app-store-supreme-
court/index.html)

------
ta17711771
Please build progressive web apps.

There's not much they can't do, now.

~~~
vaxman
They can malfunction due to changes in the device runtime anytime the OEM
chooses, so no.

------
CannisterFlux
Have I misunderstood something, or is this app's main goal to view Japanese
comics infringing copyright in some way? That's probably the reason it was
pulled. Sure it has other uses, plausible deniability, but what did the guy
expect?

------
0-O-0
This title could really benefit from some punctuation.

------
ezoe
If you need an online SaaS account, that can be remotely disabled, to develop
and distribute your software, you have been already lost anyway.

Forget that useless malicious platform already. It's not worth it.

------
buboard
What is the revenue potential of app store apps? Any studies or surveys on the
matter?

------
seemslegit
Impudent code serf thinks he's owed reasoning by his corporate lord.

~~~
redis_mlc
Nice framing. :)

------
sabujp
govt's need to catch up and start setting some rules. App stores have gotten
so large that they essentially become like real estate or store space. You
can't just have a few stores control all the means of distribution.

~~~
withinboredom
I imagine some cities already have laws around this for farmer markets, flea
markets, etc. It would be interesting (and hilarious) if cities started trying
to enforce those laws on Apple, like they did for taxes.

------
franze
> Mignori is a client for Image Board websites (we informally call “Boorus”).
> These image boards are popular in the anime community, although there can be
> image boards for anything you can think of.

I just googled this, found some references to the anime image boards. Most
were Hentai / Porn. If the main purpose of an app is viewing adult content,
its main purpose is viewing adult content - even if you have to add the
ressources yourself. (I might be wrong, I don't have a clue about the Boorus
community).

So prop. Apples "Freedom from Porn"approach?

~~~
paganel
In that case they should ban browsers, too (which in a way they do, there's a
de-facto WebKit monopoly on iOS).

~~~
franze
Honeslty if the browser would be invented in 2020 they prop. would.

~~~
wayneftw
prop? What does that mean?

~~~
catalogia
Probably 'probably.'

