The lack of responsibility in this thread (and society in general sucks).
If you left your kid on a bus - would you sue the bus company? It's your child. Your responsibility. If you don't want to take responsibility - don't have kids.
Apple provide a service to developers. Kinda like eBay. If someone lists something on eBay at 200 times RRP, and you buy it - do you expect PayPal to refund you? No. If you're stupid enough to buy it (or let your kid buy it) - deal with it.
Here's my reply which I have edited... I hope you enjoy it!!!
Ah, the difference is that eBay is known as an online auction site. Most people who buy an iPhone for the first time dont know anything about something called in-App purchases, nor is in-App purchases advertised anywhere as something to be aware of. Nor do they know about many of the myriad other features in the phone. They think of the iPhone as a phone, not as a device where third-party developers can seduce and mislead children into making in-App purchase, many of these add-ons falsely advertised as being free. However, when something like in-App purchases can target your kids surreptitiously and charge you money unsuspectingly then there is something wrong with a company in which a consumer buys a product that they think they can trust.
It is bad for Apple to continue this opaque policy of not loudly informing every iPhone, iPad and iPod purchaser of the existence and dangers and consequences of in-App purchases. Put it out in the open, like the warning on a cigarette package. Let the consumers know up front about in-App purchases, instead of finding out after many charges are made to a credit card.
But to target children this way just to make some extra $ is unethical. I stand by my points and suggestions in the above posts.
I also reiterate the last two posts are proof that many Apple supporters will always come to Apple's defense no matter what. I have tons of Apple devices and computers, but I am not naive enough to think that Apple is a kind and caring company, nor to think that it is above allowing the third-party Apps it puts on its devices to seduce kids into downloading Apps they didn't understand that their parents would have to pay for.
Apple, for its own reputation, needs to be more transparent about in-App purchases.
Intelligently criticizing Apples in - App policies may help to change Apple for the better. I doubt Apple really wants to be looked at by society as a company that targets children.
You say Apple provides a service to developers. However, it isn't developers that purchase most of their phones, it is consumers and Apple needs to protect their *consumers from shifty practices, and they know this. So Apple is also providing a service to the millions of consumers who buy their products, and therefore Apple has an obligation to protect these consumers from unscrupulous developers
By the way, your comparison to a school bus is like apples and oranges. However, I will use that school bus analogy. My kids know when to get off a school bus and they know it is their responsibility to get off the bus stop at the right corner in the city. The rules of the bus ride is made perfectly clear. Nothing is hidden under 10,000 words of legal mumbo jumbo, as is in the iPhone terms-of-agreement that no one reads or understands, but has to press "agree" in order to use the product.
My kids also take ethics in school, and such practices have been debated in their school and Apple's failure to openly inform people of the existence and dangers of in-App purchases is deemed unethical by all the students. And at my daughters' school, all of the kids have iPhones, yet they realize that Apple is allowing children to be used and targeted by third-party developers -- a practice that many people here appear to defend.
If my girls and I had known about the existence of in-App purchases (which are far from obvious when you buy an iPhone) we would have avoided a situation where I had to complain, and Apple had to waste time reimbursing me. My message to Apple: Keep your customers happy. Be transparent about the existence of in-App purchases and inform your consumer up front. Do this; and you will have happier customers. No one wants to open up a credit card bill and see charges they never intended to make
