Comment by blunte
9 years ago
#1 - Apple has a quarter of a trillion dollars in cash. You would think they could afford intelligent, reasonable app review teams. Clearly they don't bother, based on the complaints from honest developers and evidence of pure scams like this.
#2 - Average computer/phone users are willfully ignorant. I would say stupid, but that's a judgement call (even though I think it's true). Someone with knowledge can advise them, but they cannot be bothered with all that fuss. They'd rather ignore sound advice and push buttons. After all, look at the who runs the country and the complacence of many of its people.
Have you ever had a friend who was a lawyer? Did you ever get some traffic ticket and think, "Hey, I'll ask Bob if he can help me handle this!"? I'm guilty of this once in a while. But "average users" are guilty of doing this to technical people all the fucking time. And when we advise them of behaviors to change to avoid future incidents, they nod and agree, but then repeat the stupid behavior later.
Sorry for the rant, but perhaps it's time to just start replying to scammed/screwed users with, "Oh wow, that's really unfortunate. I guess you'll have to go buy a new phone/computer." Maybe that will jar them into actually using their brains.
* Edit for wine-related typos.
Well, they're a tiny bit better than Google when it comes to app reviewing. I mean, Google Play is literally filled to the rafters with low quality ripoffs of known franchises that clearly break every copyright and trademark law in the book, along with the kind of scams mentioned in the article.
But in either case, it seems like the 'submission review process' is far more minimal than whatever Apple and Google advertise on their websites. Seems like unless a lawyer/the police/authorities send a take down notice, the companies don't give a toss about anything resembling quality control.
There is some responsibility as gatekeeper of applications (especially if you make an effort to create a walled garden) to ensure some level of quality. And as this article points out, Apple obviously made little or no effort (or is very stupid? I doubt that.)
Consider the potential number of new apps per day to an app store. Now imagine that each app requires 10-60 minutes of a halfway intelligent human's time to review. That's not such a huge staff required, especially compared to the revenue of said app store.
Or let's be generous and reduce the responsibility of app stores to just police the top 20 or 50 apps. If, daily or weekly, the top 20 apps were reviewed for quality, that would obviously require a very small staff... and it would prevent situations like this.
Ultimately, situations like this will result in class action lawsuits (like the one Amazon dealt with that resulted in them refunding a lot of childrens' in-app purchases). Perhaps what's happening is that companies decide it's just easier (organizationally) to handle legal problems than to manage business better. After all, final settlements tend to be fractions of actual costs to consumers.
I'm more wondering whether Apple and Google's review processes might make them unable to be protected by safe harbour laws. I mean, there was a case where a forum type site got in trouble because members had posted illegal content and the moderation team had apparently approved every submission manually.
So I'm almost wondering whether at one point, we might either see a copyright holder sue Apple (or Google given Google Play is even worse here) for allowing infringing apps or the authorities treat them as complicit in fraud.
> Consider the potential number of new apps per day to an app store. Now imagine that each app requires 10-60 minutes of a halfway intelligent human's time to review. That's not such a huge staff required, especially compared to the revenue of said app store.
I'm not sure this adds up. By my counting, taking the total number of apps currently in the store, it would add up to something like 700 apps/day - which is reasonable. But as I understand, they review submissions rather than apps (or at least they should, for this process to make any sense) - which means that new versions of the same app also need to be reviewed, and then the same version might get reviewed multiple times if it gets rejected. Given the update frequency for a typical mobile app, this all would add up really quickly.
Could they still afford it? I bet. But it would be a significant expense.
Developers can deceive reviewers, for example by making app to check whether it is in review stage and behaving differently.
I think a better idea would be improving different permission dialogs UI and telling users to think before granting access to anything. Still it won't help against fake apps using same name as popular apps to get into search results.
On #1: in my experience the Apple reviewers are intelligent and capable people. However they are mostly non-technical.
This is incredibly frustrating because while they are strict at enforcing policy, they sometimes let things through or block things for what seems like completely arbitrary reasons. So these virus scanner apps may be in complete accordance with policy — and they let them through. But then a well-meaning app may want to do something interesting, and because it's against policy they block it.
However for developers who want to create good iOS experiences, App review will call you to keep you updated, they will take the time to consult with engineers on your behalf, and they will even advocate for your cause internally (which can sometimes, and recently for me, result in actual policy changes at Apple).
I expect Apple will soon be refunding customers of these scam virus scanner apps, and the review team will be updated with guidance to reject such apps in the future.
I find them to be hit or miss. I've had things rejected that were just simply not in violation of the rules. I think sometimes they just get a memo or something about a specific section of the guidelines and they take it too far. I've had to take things out of my apps that are 100% within the guidelines just because I got a reviewer that didn't understand what was going on.
It's extremely shocking to see how easy people are fooled online.
I didn't understand this until a few years back. Now I think of it as an inevitable misfortune that everyone will suffer sooner or later. Like a flu virus.
It's not just "average users", it's everyone. Some more than others, but everyone with a human mind dealing with a UI carefully designed to deceive.
If you get into an accident or get food poisoning, do you want your doctor treating you like this?
> #1 - Apple has a quarter of a trillion dollars in cash. You would think they could afford
Same can be said for any company/bank/government.
> #2 - Average computer/phone users are willfully ignorant
This - most people doesn't want to know how everything works - and they pay for it in various ways. It's not a matter of intelligence to know everything - but at least someone should know how they are spending their money. Could be a matter of trust, are they trusting Apple too much?
#1 - I don't really think many companies sit on .25 Trillion Dollars of cash. Perhaps if you applied appropriate taxes (which are currently deferred indefinitely), the actual cash would be much lower and thus more common amongst companies.
#2 - No, it's just that people optimize away their concerns. Until it's a _real_ problem, they don't bother. I get that, because I do that with other things in my life. But it's still unwise, and given the position (and power) technology has in our lives, I think people should adjust their priorities.
They've been dumping Trillions of dollars into the economy with QE trying to bring even a little bit of inflation which would get that money out of Apple's hands without passing it through Donald Trump's fingers.
What do you mean by "appropriate taxes".
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