Apple Sued for Pulling Co-Viewing App Rave From the App Store

[surferfb]

So both Google and Microsoft labeled it malware, the wording is questionable though, but why did neither remove a "malware" app from their stores?

I would imagine because they allow sideloading it is still available for those platforms even if it was removed from their stores. (To be clear, I have no idea if it was removed or not, but if they did it would still be available.)

Apple's whole argument for its restrictions is "you don't have to think or worry about this sort of thing - we'll handle it for you and there's no way you or your kid will accidentally install malware." I know that upsets a lot of tech enthusiasts, but it's an incredibly attractive selling feature for a lot of consumers; and I suspect a significant part of the explanation for the "why do apps sell so much better on iOS vs. Android" question.

 

[DocMultimedia]

Lol, I was going to say something just like this, but ending with an /s

Retail stores cannot just do whatever they want; restaurants cannot make whatever rules they want; no service oriented businesses can make whatever rules they want

In this case, they can make sure their services don't impact anyone harmfully, but no, just because a business is yours, you can't do whatever you want with it

You mean retail stores can't stock the products they want to sell, and restaurants can't have a specific menu of things you can order?

When you run a business you can do what you want within the law. If laws change then the business might have to change.

 

[zarmanto]

... Rave alleges Apple targeted the service because Rave competed with SharePlay, and Apple wanted to corner the market on smartphone co-viewing. Rave claims that Apple also falsely labeled the Rave Mac app as malware, preventing Mac users from installing it. ...

Discussion on Reddit suggests that Rave had unmoderated public chatrooms, pornography, issues with scams, and CSAM material. The Rave app was also labeled as malware by Kaspersky, BitDefender, Windows, and Google...

These are all of the truly pertinent details of these cases, concisely offered right in the first few paragraphs. (Well done, Ms. Clover.)

Rave clearly has a weak case, since others have likewise cited them as a vector for malware and CSAM, and Apple dropped them because they want nothing at all to do with either of those things. That's no mystery at all; outside of responding to the lawsuits via their lawyers, that's really the end of the story as far as Apple is concerned.

The only thing here that works in Rave's favor is the general animus that a certain group of people have towards Apple, specifically with regards to their famed Walled Garden... and while that gives Rave their fifteen minutes of fame in the media spotlight, I highly doubt it's going to help them in any way at all in the court of law -- at least, in the US lawsuit.

Thus, I fully expect that the lawsuits were filed for no other reason than to obtain those fifteen minutes. This very article and the comments herein demonstrate that their objective has already been accomplished; a large swath of people who had never even heard of Rave before now are abruptly artificially enraged at Apple and correspondingly sympathetic with Rave, so their userbase will soon be goosed by some portion of those people logging into their service on either Windows or Android. Rave will (internally) declare success and move on.

There's really only one question on my mind: How did we get to a place where suing Apple in multiple international jurisdictions is somehow less expensive and more effective than just launching an ad campaign?

 

[turbineseaplane]

There's really only one question on my mind: How did we get to a place where suing Apple is less expensive and more effective than just launching an ad campaign?

Same way we got Apple stealing IP for Apple Watch vs licensing it.

 

[I7guy]

Well, no, they can't as they have the monopoly on final say for apps being installed.

Says which court of law in the US. Obviously not the same as yelling fire in a movie theater but revoking deceptive apps. Grab the popcorn.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Bro wants all tic tac toe apps to be labeled as malware just for his to dominate...

But in all seriousness, if it has the concerns on unmoderated chatrooms, porn, and scams, and the fact that both Google and Microsoft labeled it as malware too then it kind of makes sense as to why.
It will be interesting to see how this lawsuit plays out, but the fact that it has malware that 2 other major companies also saw, Apple had a reason to take it down.

To be fair, I don't see any actual root cause for it to have been labeled malware.

In my about 30 seconds of looking into it, I don't see any actual allegation of specific malicious code or functionality.

Did it steal data, did it give remote access, did it try to send SMS, what?

People on reddit only get as specific as saying it tried to access pictures. Which for a sharing app seems plausible. All the other warnings are verbiage of the antivirus application itself making allegations.

Also, what kind of malware could it possibly have on iOS? The system just doesn't work that way. Abusive permissions, yes. Malware, not really. Nobody's gonna burn an iOS exploit like that.

I think it really was labeled malware for other reasons.

 

[frenchcamp49er]

ANother developer that didnt follow the rules.

 

[frenchcamp49er]

Yet they permit the X app.

You didnt add FB or IG

 

[yabeweb]

Apple can do what they want, it’s their stores, their rules…

Thankfully it's not like that.

 

[mike2q]

Apple can do what they want, it’s their stores, their rules…

This is exactly why it becomes an antitrust issue. This isn't the pre-2000s where a company could simply sell their software at another store across the street. This is a situation where one company has the power to completely cut off another company from literally half of their user base. Most people have only one phone and for many that's their only computing device as well. The app store is too big and too ubiquitous to allow it to continue unregulated. If Apple has the power to crush a developer at will then Apple has too much power for the modern world.