Earlier today, Apple cancelled my developer account and has removed Dash from the App Store.
Dash is quite a popular application from a lauded developer, Bogdan Popescu, and yesterday, when he broke the news, he had no idea what the reasoning was. Other famous Apple developers expressed their worries, and now we have an update from Popescu, with Apple’s explanation:
Apple contacted me and told me they found evidence of App Store review manipulation. This is something I’ve never done.
Apple’s decision is final and can’t be appealed.
I can’t update Dash for iOS anymore and I can’t distribute it outside of the App Store.
Dash for macOS will continue to be supported outside of the App Store. If you purchased Dash on the Mac App Store, you should migrate your license as soon as possible. At the moment you are not able to download Dash from your App Store’s Purchases tab anymore, so if you lose access to your currently activated version of Dash you won’t be able to migrate your license anymore.
Apple has pretty much nuked his entire account from orbit. Even people who own Dash can no longer install it from the Mac App Store – they’ll have to migrate their license. Dash for iOS can’t be distributed this way, of course, and is pretty much done.
Dash is quite a popular tool among Apple developers, and it seems incredibly unlikely that its developer would need to resort to manipulate App Store reviews, but obviously, none of us know the whole story. For all we know, a competitor manipulated the reviews.
In any event, all this – again, sadly – illustrates what I’ve been saying for years: building your business atop Apple’s iOS or Mac App Store is a terrible business decision. You are completely and fully at Apple’s whim, and while you may have some recourse if you’re favoured by Apple’s popular bloggers who can bring your case to the limelight, if you’re not… Well, too bad for you.
So, some “new” functionality being folded into 1st party tools as we speak – coming to a shiny whorehouse near you soon!
Yep my first thought was “Apple is gonna rip it off and don’t want to compete with the original” so they kill it like Raid kills bugs…dead.
I have to say i don’t even feel a teeny tiny bit sorry for this dev, Apple has been well known for their douchebaggery for quite some time now but the greedy devs can only see iMoney and never seem to see the bus into Apple throws them under it.
If you have to develop for mobile? Do it for Android and Windows, screw Apple. With Android you can trivially sideload and with Windows? Well MSFT is so desperate for devs they’ll happily let you put just about anything up and won’t dare say boo about it.
There already are multiple options available for Linux / Windows (Zeal, Velocity.. ) but not so many on OSX (macOS).
Mix Dash with Alfred and you can search through any documentation, even when you are offline and without an IDE open (which many developers do prefer for quick of use).
Have a look at this:
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/threat-analysis/2016/09/pup-friday-nik…
Note the similarity of the name. Not that this is an excuse for having no appeals process. There should always be a way to appeal decisions like this, so shame on Apple for that. The relative closeness of the events struck me, coupled with the same last name. I wonder if someone at Apple similarly made the wrong association.
Similarity of the name? What are you talking about. It is the same surname, that doesn’t make the name relatively close. Roberto Smith and Robert Smith would be similar. Based on your usage of similar so would John Smith.
Popescu is the most popular last name in Romania, like Smith is in UK.
It would be nice if you had included short description what actually Dash is (apart from â€quite popular app“):
It’s an API documentation browser.
And Apple makes this move shortly after showing signs of beginning to be interested in programming on iOS directly. The mind might just wonder why…
I’m not one to subscribe to conspiracy theories, but given Apple’s past behavior regarding “competing” app developers, I’m inclined to believe you’re on to something here.
Even if it’s not like that, it’s still shitty of Apple to ban without a chance to appeal. They just crapped all over a prominent app developer whose tools are used by other app developers; it’s not like he was ripping off the Candy Crush of the week. That kind of bullshit on Apple’s part can lead to a domino effect.
Morgan,
http://mediashift.org/2010/05/programming-language-for-kids-banned-…
https://scratch.mit.edu/
When a corporation actually goes so far as to ban apps designed to teach children about programming, I would hope the brass in charge would have enough of a moral disposition to say “this is wrong, we’re not going to cross this line”. Apple’s leadership either doesn’t care, or they reconcile their guilt with all the money they are banking.
Listen very carefully to the words in apple’s 1984 ad, they are uncannily insightful in foreshadowing the monster that apple itself would eventually become:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I
Edited 2016-10-07 04:15 UTC
That video has turned into the very definition of irony.
If I had any talent at video editing, I’d have replaced the dude on the screen with Jobs or Cook. They’ve totally become what they campaigned against at the very beginning.
Or they know that there will always be shmendricks willing to defend and excuse them at every turn, pro-bono.
Huh. So “schmendrick” is Yiddish for pipsqueak/nonentity. Learn something new every day.
(I only knew it as the name for the wizard in The Last Unicorn)
Which is how I found out as well.
To be fair, the implementation in question was running on Adobe Flash, which hasn’t exactly got a stellar security record.
Their app store policies are utterly ridiculous though.
RobG,
They’ll even reject apps for not censoring 3rd party news sources. We’d expect this from an oppressive regime, but a phone manufacturer? What a sad development for the land of the free.
http://www.geek.com/apple/makayamas-newspaper-iphone-app-declined-f…
Edited 2016-10-07 19:50 UTC
I think it’s much more broad than this. Building your business on the back of ANY service/api that can cut you off at the knees at a moment’s notice is a risky venture. The Apple app store is hardly unique in this regard. I’ve seen Android devs getting similarly screwed by being booted from the Play store, with no recourse, other than hoping users will side load their app.
Edited 2016-10-06 20:23 UTC
But that is recourse…
If I was a developer of an app and Google removed it from the play store, I would immediately let my existing customers know that they can continue to side-load the app while I’m appealing the decision.
At least the customers still have an option in this case – unlike the Apple ecosystem…
iOS users can sideload apps too, without a jailbreak even.
Oh? How do we do that?
The only thing I know of that even comes close to side-loading is using XCode to sign your own builds of apps with a testing certificate. While this is possible and is completely aboveboard, it’s not exactly the same. You have to have a Mac with Xcode installed, and the source and/or unsigned bundles first. In effect, this means you’re limited to “side-loading” open source apps.
So, is there another way to side load that I don’t know about? If so, please do share.
I can’t imagine that being very good for your revenue stream though. And if you can’t convince them to put your app back up, you’re pretty much boned.1
Not exactly. I am an app developer for both iOS and Android and the way Apple is handling the app approval and rejection is completely different than Google. Apple’s attitude to the app developer is quite arrogant: as if Apple grants you a favour to accept your app. Google wants you to develop Android apps and will only reject an app in very precise circumstances.
Apple asking $99 a year to be an app developer while Google charges a one time fee of $25 is just a perfect illustration of the attitude of both.
Edited 2016-10-07 16:01 UTC
Thom Holwerda,
I can’t +1 you enough, Thom.
If a corporation wants to ban competing functionality, pornography, competing web-browsers, scripting languages, etc in it’s own app-store, then it should be their choice. But it’s an absolute travesty that corporations are stripping users of the ability to go to other stores. This goes against every moral principal I stand for. When you are a developer: a walled garden equals censorship.
I’d also like to admonish politicians for not doing more to protect user and developer interests in the face of unprecedented corporate control. If only they had stepped with small changes last decade when this was first becoming a problem, we would likely have more viable app-store competition today. But now it’s going to be extremely difficult to counteract the market imbalances that have developed since then.
Edited 2016-10-06 20:43 UTC
Why don’t you explain how Apple is doing that? There are options for running software not from the AppStore and always have been under macOS. iOS is another story, but given that such devices require a higher level of trust from the user, it actually makes sense.
In reality it’s the developers and programmers without morals that make all the shitty malware, spyware, adware, for a quick buck that fucked everything up.
kefkathecruel,
Not for nothing, but this very article is about apple banning a quality app. Also, why assume that apple is the only store capable of curating quality apps? (and I use this term very lightly because let’s be honest, there are plenty of “shitty” apps even in apple’s app store). Look at Amazon, or Steam, or Debian, Cydia, etc, many even predating apple’s app store. Apple doesn’t have a monopoly on quality, and even if you think they do, no problemo – it’s entirely your choice. But that’s the thing, your choices shouldn’t be imposed on everyone else. App stores should be competing on merit rather than be enforced by self-serving manufacturers who don’t want to compete with other stores.
Edited 2016-10-07 20:59 UTC
Speaking for myself, one app store is enough for most purposes. I never liked having to add strange repos just to install a package under this or that version of Linux. Not that the App Store in its current state is much better. I would go so far as to say it needs a hell of a lot of work. That said, I don’t want to hunt through ten stores to find what I need. I would refer you to your own advice to me: “your choices shouldn’t be imposed on everyone else” and that is exactly what you are asking for here as far as I can tell.
Kagi ran a market for ages. Nobody is stopping anybody from doing that insofar as the Mac is concerned. Heck, Kagi predated pretty much every app store out there.
On the subject of smart devices, I offer that users have a higher security expectation This is true if for no other reason than the degree of data users are expected to voluntarily give to a smartphone. The electronic payment systems integrate with financial accounts, all of your personal medical data, walking/running/navigation tracking apps that monitor your location, etc, etc, etc. Third party stores, in this regard, increases the attack surface.
kefkathecruel,
Brilliant, why don’t we just close down all the redundant stores. We don’t need three grocery stores in town, if we can shut them down it would save me the burden of choice! Two pet stores, who wants to deal with that hell? And don’t even get me started on pizza shops. What takes the cake is that there’s nothing I hate more than tolerating other people’s choices of politicians, the government should just pick a default and leave us the bugger out of it. Only zealots insist that people want choice.
I never said “only” zealots insist people want choice. You can’t even accurately portray the comments to which you are responding.
Whether you like it or not, there is a significant portion of the population that doesn’t enjoy installing custom roms, that doesn’t want to tweak every last setting under the sun in order to have a useful computing experience, that doesn’t want to waste time researching which stores are secure and which aren’t. I’m not saying that choice should be taken away, if you actually look at what I’ve said. I said people prefer a good default with the option of changing it.
“People a good default and the option to replace it if they don’t like it. ”
That doesn’t mean that people want five hundred options either. Maybe you have fun clipping coupons and comparison shopping, but not everybody enjoys that sort of thing. In actuality there are often fewer choices by way of products than stores to buy them in.
I don’t know how things are in your hometown but most of my grocers sell Bisquick and Krusteaz. Coke and Pepsi. Mars or Nestle. Lays or Ruffles? It isn’t just food. Ford or Chevy?
To wit Apple and Microsoft are the only relevant “desktop PC” players according to your arguments, and yet we have the Apple Store, Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry’s, etc. alongside a multitude of homebrew shops, Amazon, etc.
Why do I need ten distributors if I can only buy products from two manufacturers?
Here in the U.S. where Apple is actually headquartered, our political system is primarily a two party operation. There are positive and negative aspects to that restricted degree of choice.
The market provides you with choice so why demand that Apple cater to your preferences?
Given application interaction with the system and other applications, you have the potential to open a lot of security holes once you start letting in apps from less secure distribution platforms. Are the apps to be isolated from one another, their data siloed or compartmentalized into uselessness? Do you prevent these choice-wanting users from interacting with the systems of device owners that didn’t want more vulnerable systems in order to limit exposure of surface area?
This is all a bunch of off-topic hogwash. The problem here isn’t Apple not supporting, or in your words “banning” third-party application distribution, but rather an issue with Apple’s protocols. This “no appeal” nonsense is just pure garbage. It is an issue that can be addressed by changing protocols. This is, of course, assuming no review manipulation took place. Manipulation could have been funded by a competitor to Dash, for example, which of course illustrates another reason Apple’s policies on these matters need to change. I’d like to see some community consultation or oversight in the process, but that is about as likely as third party distributors seeing any support from Apple.
kefkathecruel,
You are trolling me, right? You know what, that’s fine, I’m already content with what I said, so if you want to add something more, then I’ll let you have the last word. Use it well, and have a great weekend!
So, if you hate a fellow competitor, all you have to do is sabotage their app reviews and poof, Apple makes them disappear?
Had a quick google, $250 to buy 100 reviews. Suddenly having 100 5* star reviews appearing on ANY small app will look dodgy. Instant ban, no appeal.
One disgruntled employee could take down a whole business…
Well, you have to manipulate the reviews to appear to be positive *and* hope that Apple notices it and actually cares.
Until apple notices, you’ll be boosting the profile of a competitor to your disadvantage.
Its like thermonuclear war. The only winning move is to give Matthew Broderick a computer.