No reason for Apple to remove the app from my purchase history though. There is still so much fraudulent activity on the App Store, tons of rubbish apps that should have never met Apple’s commandments and genuine developer support is getting weaker and weaker. I have not been buying apps there for a while and I am more confident about my decision after this.
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Doubt Cast on 'Dash' Developer's Defense Against Apple's Claim of Review Fraud [Updated]
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He claimed he had zero contact with them and no knowledge of it at all. Funny, I'd think you might have some contact with someone you were giving $100 a year on your credit card and also giving your hardware to.
Agreed.. Apple has rules.. and it's becoming more and more clear he broke them. This isn't the Google Play store.. he's lucky they tolerated it as long as they did. It's more and more obvious he knew he was doing something hinkey..
Did he say "zero contact"? I know he claimed he didn't know what they were doing, but I didn't see him claim there was no contact at all...
Where there is smoke, there's usually fire. The further people dig into this story, the harder it seems the developer can extricate himself from this mess.
Was hard to believe, but also sad that its kinda true.
I was thinking Apple were linking accounts just because of the used payment information.
Or that some auto detection system was running amok.
But that way, its deep linked, well done Apple!
Btw.:
Apple should setup a public "app removal & fraud listing" site, and add a section to their development license agreement like:
E.g If you get kicked out of the App Store, or one of your Apps get removed. You agree that we public the name of the affected apps, and the reasons why it got removed.
That way customers who bought the software would also know why the software they paid for got removed.
I was thinking Apple were linking accounts just because of the used payment information.
Or that some auto detection system was running amok.
But that way, its deep linked, well done Apple!
Btw.:
Apple should setup a public "app removal & fraud listing" site, and add a section to their development license agreement like:
E.g If you get kicked out of the App Store, or one of your Apps get removed. You agree that we public the name of the affected apps, and the reasons why it got removed.
That way customers who bought the software would also know why the software they paid for got removed.
Its not just the credit card.
There's just too much information linking him to the other account and his claim of ignorance doesn't hold water. How can you give someone your credit card, and hardware and then not talk them at all?
This has been bothering me too. Unless the app itself is somehow dangerous or compromised, it seems only fair to the existing customers to keep it available-- given all the uncertainty around Kapeli, I imagine more than a few people are going to question sharing credit card data with them.
Maybe there's a legal problem with Apple continuing to source an app that they no longer have a legal agreement with the developer to distribute? If that's the case, as a consumer, I'd like to see a clause added to the developer agreement that, after termination of the agreement, Apple can continue to distribute an application to customers who purchased prior to termination, at Apple's discretion.
That might have implications to a developer I haven't thought through though...
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I haven't seen him claim that he hasn't talked to the other account holder at all, I've only heard him say he didn't control that account and imply he wasn't aware of what was happening with it. That doesn't mean they haven't gone to the movies on occasion...
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Or the other account holder should.
"Moral superiority?" No. Contract and TOS compliance? Yes.
His most recent statement "telling the whole story" never once mentions fraudulent reviews. He goes out of his way to distance himself from the other account, but says nothing about the bad behavior. I guess he's implicitly blaming his mom because she had access and control over those apps?
Where did the fraudulent reviews come from? Who posted or paid for them? Surely the only person with a financial stake in false reviews is the developer taking money from the sale of the apps.
It sounds like he thought he could play sneaky with his B-Team apps while protecting his legitimate app Dash above it all, but Apple caught on.
Where did the fraudulent reviews come from? Who posted or paid for them? Surely the only person with a financial stake in false reviews is the developer taking money from the sale of the apps.
It sounds like he thought he could play sneaky with his B-Team apps while protecting his legitimate app Dash above it all, but Apple caught on.
His statement to iMore makes his story even less credible. Every single time he opens his mouth, his story makes 180 degree turn. I am beginning to wonder if the developer is suffering from mental disorder, similar to Elliot from Mr. Robot.
Just say I screwed up, I am sorry, and I learned my lesson.
Just say I screwed up, I am sorry, and I learned my lesson.
At first he claimed he didn't talk to them. His story has changed as more information has come out.
Someone else with more experience with the Apple Development Program might have to correct me but to transfer any of your apps to another developers account do you have to link your accounts first?
If so these 2 quotes contradict each other - in addition to the multitude of other inconsistencies people have dug up on this guy.
I dunno... I can understand not wanting to throw mom under the bus. I'd say he's turning maybe 15 degrees each time.
I think he was getting selective with the details. The irony is that if people didn't like Dash as much as they do, nobody would have been digging this deeply to get to the bottom of it.
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I read it as not having wanted to until folks here figured it out for themselves.
If he said he transferred some apps to a secondary account so he could play around with review manipulation while protecting his primary apps I'd believe that.
I can envision a conversation where he'd say "hey mum I need a second developer account so I'm using your name" and she says "ok darling" and has nothing more to do with it.
What I can't envision is a conversation where mum goes "hey darling can you help me convert these png files into ico files? And by the way I'm an engineer so I've orchestrated a review manipulation strategy to boost these apps and crap on competitor apps".
Yeah, envisioning a scenario is still a few steps from it being true...
I still lean towards this being more mixup than master plan. Yeah, I think there was some fraud at the heart of it, by somebody, but it all seems like small potatoes that then spun out of control. The challenge of the App Store is you're dealing with a lot of ordinary people rather than corporations with established processes. Ordinary people are all weird once you've looked at them closely enough.
You are probably right. But in the grand scheme of things, neither the developer nor his mom were breaking the law. Just the App Store guidelines.
He could've just told the truth, that his mom didn't know, yada yada yada, and apologize on her behalf. With App Store guideline as complicated as it is, many would've understood and moved on. Instead, he chose to complain in public about Apple disabling his account without providing other side of the story.
Yeah, it would have gone better if he was a little less impulsive. Someone breached their contract though, so there was a law broken, but it was a civil not a criminal offense and wouldn't result in anything worse than what happened anyway...
He linked to the discussion thread here on MR so he knows what people are upset about (unless iMore inserted that link). In addition to your mea culpa wishlist I'll add: "and it was dumb to publish that phone call, which I've now taken down."
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Yeah, I didn't think Apple would just close the account for no reason, whether because they "care deeply about developers" or because of the PR mess it creates (or both). Seeing as they wound up getting Schiller involved, clearly they didn't just make this decision off the cuff.
It's easy to assume that it's all Apple's fault, but as it turns out they're doing their job- making sure developers aren't scamming their way to the top of the App Store. Good call on their part.
It's easy to assume that it's all Apple's fault, but as it turns out they're doing their job- making sure developers aren't scamming their way to the top of the App Store. Good call on their part.
This "stories" are nothing new. Remember the early days of app approvals. Steve Jobs already said in an interview, that despite Apple denied some apps, majority of apps were approved in a timely manner. And apps that were denied did have some issues, and Apple took the chin in taking up the heat to the negative news.
Looks like the same thing is happening here.
Looks like the same thing is happening here.