
Ask HN: Apple closed our entire app store - tsunamifury
I am asking Hacker News for any help or advice they may have to offer.  This is our situation:<p>Midnight on Monday we received a termination notice from Apple. The notice vaguely implied 'bad faith' as the reason to terminate our contract.<p>Tuesday morning all our apps were removed from the app store. We represent several small and large publishers, so almost 100 multimedia apps were pulled down.<p>Tuesday midday we call dev relations and get a stone-wall from Apple. Dev relations tells us that they will not give us a reason for the termination.<p>Tuesday afternoon our lawyers get involved.  They try to use back channels to get more information, but are also stone-walled.  They then inform us that they have a conflict of interest with Apple and cannot represent us as apple will not sign a conflict waiver.<p>Tuesday evening we contact a senior individual within Apple.  He informs us that our account is clean in the app store records and there are no complaints against us and that Legal has requested the termination.  Legal will not provide a response.<p>Our company employs almost 100 people and relies heavily on the iTunes App Store as a major source of income. We also work with Google, Blackberry, Nokia, Windows 7 and several other app stores and have never been treated in this way.<p>I'm in shock that Apple has unilaterally terminated our business relationship.  Does anyone have any experience with this situation or any advice?
======
kefs
Stop yelling fire when there is none. If you want community support, then link
your apps.

Link to the apps currently "with Google, Blackberry, Nokia, Windows (Phone) 7,
and several other app stores". Tell us the name of your company. Tell us the
names of the titles pulled.

Until you release any of this, you are yelling fire when there is clearly
none.

~~~
tsunamifury
I was advised not to risk any media problem yet by revealing my company. I am
asking for any advice or help from anyone who has been in the same situation.

Please contact me at chrishnhelp@gmail.com

~~~
AngryParsley
I hate to do this, but you've wasted a lot of time with your post and
comments. Like many people in this thread, I was frustrated by your refusal to
give us basic information such as your company name.

You linked to your resume (<http://www.constantwanderer.com/resume/>) a few
months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4033815>

Looking at your LinkedIn profile, I see the company name is Mobifusion.
Apple's app store has no results, but searching Google's store gives me this:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Mobifusion,+...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Mobifusion,+Inc)

What does Mobifusion make? Almost 200 apps. A bunch of recipe apps. Lots of
cocktail recipe apps. Vegan recipe apps. Various public domain works (Bible,
Quran, etc). There are a lot of identical or extremely similar apps. Different
versions of the CIA World Factbook. Different versions of the Bible. Some
Harry Potter encyclopedias, etc.

It's no wonder Apple removed these. It's no wonder you refused to reveal your
company.

Again, I didn't want to do this, but you tried to take advantage of HN. You
falsely painted Apple in a bad light and falsely portrayed your own company as
blameless. Shame on you.

~~~
acqq
Note his description of his legal problems:

"We were in the middle of an especially tenacious individual who was
fraudulently claiming we were using a name he did not have a TM on. As our
lawyers were trying to solve the problem, we were shut down."

Here's the example of his app, priced 2.42 EUR:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobi.andro...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobi.android3.NewEarthDeck)

The title of the app uses a best-seller author and book name, and is in fact
just the 52 "quotes" from the author.

Then, the real-user review shows that the app doesn't deliver even that:

"The latest update at first told me my licence was invalid, then when I
wouldn't fill in my email address to get spam from mobifusion it would crash
and exit."

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting comment thread.

Not enough information to do anything of course. But these two points stand
out:

1) Tuesday afternoon our lawyers get involved. They try to use back channels
to get more information, but are also stone-walled. They then inform us that
they have a conflict of interest with Apple and cannot represent us as apple
will not sign a conflict waiver.

2) Tuesday evening we contact a senior individual within Apple. He informs us
that our account is clean in the app store records and there are no complaints
against us and that Legal has requested the termination. Legal will not
provide a response.

If both of these statements are accurate as represented then Apple Legal
determined that you were doing something illegal, further by distributing your
Apps it was exposing Apple to potential liability, further your lawyers
figured it out too and they don't want anything to do with it.

Looking at the apps that get this sort of treatment in the App store I see
things that infringe trademarks or copyrights of other companies (misusing
sound-alike names or imagery).

Of course one can't know for sure until you include representative
applications that were removed.

~~~
tsunamifury
The lawyers represent both Apple and Us. This was the problem. Evidently a
large number of firms are on Apple's retainer and when you get into legal
issues with Apple, the firms wont represent you.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Well you need new lawyers then in any case. I'm curious when you started your
relationship with these lawyers. I ask because they had a conflict of interest
the moment they agreed to represent you and Apple and would have settled the
issue then not now. (Well any decent lawyers would and Apple tends to hire
decent lawyers so by association I'm going to guess they aren't some sketchy
organization)

That was why when I read that statement from you, in my head I read it as "The
lawyers have made up this story to get out of representing these guys." which
I admit was uncharitable to the lawyers. The more charitable interpretation
would be "Wow, these lawyers are so clueless they didn't bother establishing
ahead of time that a person publishing in the Apple App Store might come into
conflict with their marquee customer Apple? It sure is a good thing they
recused themselves since if this was representative Tsunami is better off
without them."

------
kanwisher
Name sounded familiar, he says it was shovelware in a previous post on hacker
news. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4389468>

~~~
acqq
Just a guess: He also claims that his "top sells" are "simple reference apps"
and that the users "throw them away" after they "impulse" buy them. He also
claims they use clever "brand" names. So I can imagine he calls the app for
example "Excel" and in the app content is "Ten tips how you can edit the Excel
file."

If something like this is what he makes (app spams) I think it's good he got
blocked.

------
calciphus
If Apple is really in the wrong here, you SHOULD want to "risk any media
problem" - especially if they're not your problems, but Apple's.

Bullshit meter is reading pretty high at the moment.

Mostly it sounds like you were breaking laws or violating some fairly obvious
TOS rule for them to pull ALL of your apps.

------
gbin
When I had to deal with the apple appstore it was really clear that the rules
are by Apple for Apple. It is far from a "fair" treatment, especially if your
app doesn't generate any revenue for them.

Now I don't know how bad you blew the apple guidelines but _at least_ they
should tell you right away what's wrong.

Maybe you have yourself a clue to share ?

------
sadfaceunread
Post the termination notice in full perhaps?

How many apps went down? Did you violate iTunes/App Store T+C in some
noticeable way? Finally, did you violate someone elses rights copyrights,
trademarks, intellectual property such that they may have sent a demand letter
to Apple?

Perhaps in retrospect, having all the apps tied to a single entity was a bad
service for your clients representing a single point of failure.

~~~
logn
>Perhaps in retrospect, having all the apps tied to a single entity was a bad
service for your clients representing a single point of failure.

Yeah I worked at a company the bought an off-the-shelf template for an app
from a company that did a lot of customization too for us. They required every
client to register the apps at Apple themselves. Smart.

------
feyyaz
Multimedia apps statement is very ambiguous and dangerous. Did you have an
video or music app? Or a photo gallery app that users can publish copyrighted
photos. Apple probably deserves right to remove your app if they see you as an
opponent in the market. Please elaborate the situation and publicize your
company name for good.

------
wooster
If you're with who I think you are, your company's website is down and the
company Twitter feed hasn't been updated since last November.

If I had to guess at Apple's reasons (given the "bad faith" line), it'd be
that they suspect you of something along the lines of posting bogus
reviews/ratings or buying downloads.

------
animex
Are you really that shocked? You should do some research how developers have
been treated by Apple before basing your entire company on them. There are
dozens upon dozens of similar stories w/ similar non-responsive incidents.

------
smashing
What is a "multimedia app"?

Will you provide links to your website as well?

------
sciurus
Get new lawyers.

------
msie
Ugh. It's moments like this that make me, an Apple fan, really hate Apple.

~~~
taligent
Are you kidding me ? You know NONE of the facts. NONE.

~~~
tsunamifury
I dont know any of the facts either, as Apple is refusing to disclose them or
even talk to us about them. The problem is getting them to talk!

~~~
chilzap
App names....

------
taligent
Can you please provide us with the link to your apps ?

If Apple Legal are involved then 99% of the time it is due to a third party
filing a lawsuit against Apple because of something you've done e.g. violate
trademarks. So you why do you think Apple has terminated your account ?

Now the other point is why are you representing small and large publishers ?
Why don't they have their own developer accounts ? This is very unusual.

~~~
tsunamifury
Its not at all unusual for third parties to develop apps for publishers and
manage their sales channels. If you survey the education space, many
publishers do this. Its just another way of handling the mobile space.

Our apps have been taken down, so there is no way to link to them
unfortunately.

We have occasionally gotten frivolous claims for TM infringement, which we
attempt to clean up quickly (If you have a lot of apps, you'll know that you
get targeted by random individuals with no case). We were in the middle of an
especially tenacious individual who was fraudulently claiming we were using a
name he did not have a TM on. As our lawyers were trying to solve the problem,
we were shut down.

~~~
saurik
What was the name of the app? (Some of us have access to historical iTunes
data.) Alternatively, you mention you are also on other devices; links?

~~~
mayukh
Seriously, they'll begin to lose credibility here if you don't list your apps
and link to some web-presence

------
pyalot2
And this comes to you as a surprise how exactly? Oh you thought you can hand
over control over your distribution channel entirely to another entity, over
whose decisions and actions you have exactly zero control or recourse, and you
expected not to get screwed? Right.

~~~
mattbessey
What a wildly unhelpful and rude comment.

~~~
thaumaturgy
You're right, but so is pyalot. It seems like there's at least one complaint
on HN every week about some developer getting nuked by some platform they've
tied themselves to; Apple this week, Twitter last week, Facebook, Google ...

To me it's roughly equivalent to weekly complaints from sysadmins that their
servers got rooted because they left root remotely accessible with a password
of "root". Sympathy quickly gives way to, "well, that sucks, but you should
know better."

You tied your sole source of revenue to a company known for its
capriciousness. The advantage was that you got access to a huge distribution
channel, and a chance at a lot of money. The disadvantage was that one day
your number might come up and since you have absolutely no negotiating power
or legal leverage with that company, you'll be out of options pretty quick --
unless you're lucky enough to find somebody who cares to solve your problem
for you.

So your business plan should reflect that. Either charge high enough margins
that you can afford to take six months to a year off after something like this
to work on the next thing, or don't do it in the first place.

I'll usually keep this to myself because I really don't want to shit on
someone that's having a bad day already. But, these stories are also getting
really old fast.

