Undermining the power of software vendors is an institutional imperative at Apple. There is a memory of the days when they were dependent on Adobe and Microsoft for their hardware to be viable. When they design App stores they make the rules and game the system with this in mind.

It's not just that the stores are open to everyone-- shovelware and all. Steam does that but because they care about the ecosystem they protect pricing for premium products. They make reviews and recommendations relevant. Try to get your terrible knock off of a hit game come up in a search-- they are on to that.

> It’s astonishing how marginal the Microsoft Store is on Windows.

That's good, there's a 30 year legacy of Windows software being downloadable online through a website and people clicking setup.exe to get it done. The App Store nonsense is MS clumsily following in the footsteps of Apple's "users are too stupid to be trusted" philosophy.

I wish I could install more apps outside the App Store. There's a few apps I came to rely on that are only available via the App Store, and when I switched jobs to a company that locks down App Store access, I could no longer use them and had to find alternatives.

That whole “just create a new user account” response is peak support theater

Phone app stores have the same problem. Here is the link:

https://www.apple.com/us/search/ChatGPT?src=globalnav

It has the exact same problem complained about here. It's full of shovelware copies. Google play, orinically gives a better answer on the web, but on phones it has the same problem as the Apple App store.

Apple doesn't care. The iOS app store is just as full of crummy shovelware and ads. They are a "software and services" company after all.

The embarassment should be felt by the commentariat that rushes to defend Apple's store sharecropping tax by repeating ancient canards about how a fee is necessary for Apple to maintain its rigorous app review process that differentiates it from the street markets of Android, F-Droid, and whoever else.

It also exists because it's a low friction way for app developers to generate revenue for their app.

This is actually part of the reason why people complain about the approvals process.

Your entirely legitimate app will get rejected for some confusing, badly described reason you have to guess at, meanwhile an obvious rip off with terrible functionality slides through without comment.

The web doesn't have a approval process at all and yet when I search "AI Chat" I don't get a bunch of borderline trademark violations on the first page of results. I get the real ChatGPT and Claude and Character.ai and Poe and some other startups that don't exist just to fool people.

Scams exist on the Web too but that doesn't mean you need to promote them to people. This is squarely on Apple. Everyone knows the mark of a trustworthy store is that they will direct you to their competitors when they don't have what you're looking for.

Both can be true. I've done mostly web, but I now work for a company that ships both iOS and Android apps and the cost of dealing with both Apple and Google app store compliance/review is not negligible.

At the same time, I'm sure they're both getting blasted with knockoff apps that find ways to stay just within the letter of the law, if not the spirit of it.

> I wonder if I made an app that was simply a front-end for the actual app store if it would be approved.

It would not, as the primary purpose of this entire enterprise is to maintain total control of all aspects of the market, including discoverability.

Apple and Google and any app store provider have the ideal goal of zero friction for real, valuable apps and infinite friction for bad, scam apps. They can never hit that ideal, but when you're getting rage from both ends it's likely that you are in a place on the continuum that is far below ideal—you make it a huge pain for real, valuable apps and too easy for bad, scam apps. This appears to be where the Apple store is, at least, and it's an unfortunate place to be. They may be doing their best, but it sounds like their best has some pretty significant room to improve.

> First people complain the app store has a ridiculous approvals process and people keep getting rejected unfairly. Now people complain that they are too loose and letting in shovelware. What’s it going to be?

It's actually both.

The problem with establishing lots of hoops to jump through, is that legit organizations can't deal with it, but scammers have no problems playing the game. It's just the cost of doing business, for them. They learn how to game the system, because that's their business model.

I don't usually have problems, when my apps get rejected by the Apple App Store Review. I get the thing fixed after one or two back-and-forths, but it's still a big fat pain.

I do think that the scammers have figured out how to ram through a lot of crap, though, and Apple needs to look at this.

First, though, they need to consider it to be a problem. If each of the shovelware apps makes them a bit of money, they will be more willing to "look the other way," than for free apps (like the ones that I do). I believe that I am held to a higher standard than scammers.

It's a well known security problem. An attacker in this kind of environment is spending very little money per app, and gets a payoff for breaking through: The application process is their business. Someone actually building an app is focusing on the quality of their app themselves, and not getting through an approval gauntlet. The ratio of applications that are crap or scams vs apps that are trying their best and have reasonably good quality is abysmal.

If you catch 99.999% of scam apps, and incorrectly slow down 1% of honest developers, you end up with an app store that is full of scams, and the developers are unhappy.

> What’s it going to be?

It could be both. Black box systems that reject useful tools without explanation "because they don't want to be gamed" but also don't reject shovelware because they didn't break an unspoken rule, isn't exclusive.

I think the answer is better curation and ranking. And perhaps some sort of reputation system (eg. This app is by OpenAI vs “This app is by some unknown spot”)

> First people complain the app store has a ridiculous approvals process and people keep getting rejected unfairly. Now people complain that they are too loose and letting in shovelware. What’s it going to be?

At best a walled garden is collective bargaining -- a group of users (buyers) lock into requiring vendors to negotiate with their representative, and because their business is collectively valuable vendors have to meet higher privacy standards or whatever the users care about, which they couldn't extract if negotiating individually with huge companies like Facebook.

So, Apple will get yelled at whenever it fails to be a good agent in collective bargaining -- either by excluding quality vendors and driving up their costs, or by including low-quality vendors. Either one gives up the benefits to users of the walled garden.

An index of reliable apps is, you know, fine. An index with a business structure that ensures better collective bargaining gets interesting.

It's like they built an iron gate but forgot to install a doorbell

It's going to be that it was always all about the bottom line, and only the bottom line.

We could have the worst of both options. A process that lets shovelware through but at the same time gives lots of trouble to legitimate app creators

Approvals never stopped shovelware, that always seemed to get free rein.

> First people complain the app store has a ridiculous approvals process and people keep getting rejected unfairly. Now people complain that they are too loose and letting in shovelware. What’s it going to be?

When the ridiculous approvals process blocks good apps and fails to block shovelware from flooding the platform I think people have plenty of reasons to complain it’s not working well.

For the most part Apple is in a bind of their creation here. They don’t want to surrender the cut of money they get from the App Store so they’re overly permissive about exploitative casino games and scams as long as they have in-app purchases. But they DO want to have standards, so they enforce standards on the books somewhat arbitrarily and it ends up falling on normal apps that just have some kind of functionality that hits an unknown third rail.

And even worse, there is an informal two-tiered system where companies like Meta and Amazon and Netflix can almost flagrantly violate App Store policies and mostly get away with it because of high demand for keeping the app in the store and because they have legal teams that will sue.

It would be better if they had an actual two-tiered system where developers with a track record of being good (defined however) can get a non-transferable “hunting license” to fast track approval and get more sensitive API privileges. But they’ll never do that either, because companies like Meta absolutely would not earn the privileges but demand them anyway.

It's both? They have a ridiculous approvals process considering the approvals process doesn't even work. They say they have to block all these legitimate apps as an accident of having tight security, but then they don't actually have tight security. Half the time it seems like the criteria for approving an app is how much ad revenue it brings the app store owner. Everyone who makes a legitimate app has stories of having updates denied after 3-4 weeks for no reason or a stupid reason, then resubmitting, and having it approved after another 3-4 weeks. And then they claim they need a 30% cut of all your income in order to pay for this process there's no possible way to eliminate even though it doesn't achieve its stated goals at all. Their stock price says they're not spending very much of it on that process.

I bet Apple's and Google's own apps don't have to wait 6-8 weeks. Maybe it's purely anticompetitive.

Edit: Oh, and the fact they get away telling such obvious lies without constantly being called out 24/7 by millions of people speaks to the power dynamic in play.

I have a somewhat popular (yet still niche) app in the store, when I first launched it it was the only result. There are now a number of copycats. Report filed with Apple, nothing was done.

I’m considering spending the $1k or so to file a trademark on the name, maybe it’ll actually make them do something? The app isn’t making crazy amounts by far, but enough that $1k could be justifiable. If anyone has been through this I’d love to hear their thoughts.

For what it’s worth I know my product is clearly better - my users tell me - but it’s infuriating to see a knockoff show up before my app in the search results when I tell someone to look up the app in the store.

> WinDirStat

https://github.com/windirstat/windirstat

>No curation.

Tiny bit of curation? I’ve seen complaints about this Apple App Store policy:

4.3 Spam (b) Also avoid piling on to a category that is already saturated; the App Store has enough fart, burp, flashlight, fortune telling, dating, drinking games, and Kama Sutra apps, etc. already. We will reject these apps unless they provide a unique, high-quality experience. Spamming the store may lead to your removal from the Apple Developer Program.

They might not be related.

I'd rather look at real buttholes.

Obviously you gotta also advertise and pay the remaining 70% in fees. You will then bask in the glory.

First time hearing about setapp

What is worth $33 a month there? Seems like a bunch of basic utilities

There is no other way to publish on iOS, by design.

If you want to access the most lucrative smartphone market segment in the richest country, you have to play ball with Apple. There is no other choice.

Yes, there's zero scammy shit on the web