Of the highest 1,000 grossing apps on the App Store, nearly two percent are scams, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. And those apps have bilked consumers out of an estimated $48 million during the time they’ve been on the App Store, according to market research firm Appfigures. The scale of the problem has never before been reported. What’s more, Apple profits from these apps because it takes a cut of up to a 30 percent of all revenue generated through the App Store. Even more common, according to The Post’s analysis, are “fleeceware” apps that use inauthentic customer reviews to move up in the App Store rankings and give apps a sense of legitimacy to convince customers to pay higher prices for a service usually offered elsewhere with higher legitimate customer reviews.
Apple likes to claim the App Store is needed to keep people safe, but that simply is a flat-out lie. The App Store is filled to the brim not only with obvious scams, but also a whole boatload of gambling applications designed specifically to trick children into spending money. In fact, these “games” make up a huge proportion of the App Store’s revenue.
Apple earns top dollar from every scam or disturbing gambling app on the App Store, so there’s a huge conflict of interest here that in and of itself should be enough reason to take control over iOS away from Apple. iOS users should have the freedom to install and use an application store that does not prey on their children and promotes scams.
Had a discussion recently about Homebrew vs Mac Ports. I compared it to Arch Linux’s AUR, where people just create a script to patch / download a piece of software from it’s upstream sources to compile / install it on the Arch Linux system. This really is how Homebrew works as well.
But someone compared it to iOS vs Android. Which I don’t think is quite fair. Both at least have some level of QA process. While in theory Google’s doesn’t have as much. I think it’s more likely that they have about equal, and really it’s the fact that Android allows alternate methods of installation where people get their viruses / malware.
Apple still has this reputation of being superior in every way, but more prodding into their behavior goes to show they’re just like all the other tech companies in regard to software and greed.
“Apple likes to claim the App Store is needed to keep people safe, but that simply is a flat-out lie.”
The cops don’t catch all crooks therefore lets abolish the police – what could go wrong?
“take control over iOS away from Apple”
What!?!? And give it to who?
Strossen,
Apple can still police it’s own store, but apple’s authority to police end user devices should not be coerced against an owner’s will.
“ Apple can still police it’s own store, but apple’s authority to police end user devices should not be coerced against an owner’s will.”
I can’t stick neoliberals at the best of times but the tech variant with their cavalier disregard for the safety of a billion users in the name of free market ideology and some vacuous slogans about personal freedom is really hard to take
Strossen,
Let’s allow people buy all the guns they want, which can and do kill people. But by the grace of god owners can never be allowed to use competing app stores!
/sarcasm
Hyperbole much?
The article says the apps have bilked people out of $48m of which apple supposedly has earned 30% i.e. $14m.
Apple makes north of $10bn a quarter in profit. Therefore these scams represent about than 0.1% of Apple’s earnings (not revenue) in a quarter. I am quite confident that Apple would love to have zero scam apps on their platform because they precisely do not make them enough money to even be worth turning a blind eye to.
And am not sure the sort of person who gets scammed by an app on the App Store would be better off in the Wild West that is the internet to search for their own apps.