Apple does not treat all developers equally
Apple has a & lsquo; whitelist & rsquo; from developers who have access to additional APIs for the App Store. These include the video app Hulu, which, like a limited group of other developers, has access to special features to cancel a user's subscription and refund money. Normally, developers do not have this option and users have to turn to Apple. This API was used in 2015 when subscription upgrading and downgrading was not yet built in.
It appears from the lawsuit between Apple and Epic Games. It revealed an email exchange between Matt Fischer (vice president of the App Store) and his colleague Lin. Fischer has been in this role since 2010 and was asked a number of questions about the payment system and measures Apple is taking against fraud.
Hulu appeared to have the option of converting users from an in-app purchase to paying directly to Hulu itself. Phil Schiller got wind of it and wanted to know what was going on. This was followed by an email exchange, in which Lin indicated that Hulu and a select few developers had been granted extra privileges for refunds and cancellations.
Fischer was also asked if Apple is giving some developers access to special features, which are not for others. are available. But Fischer said no, although he added that Apple sometimes tests functions with a small group of developers. However, in the case of Hulu, there does seem to be privileges.
Apple rejects more than a third
Millions of apps are submitted to the App Store every year, and Apple has been found to reject more than a third. So said Trystan Kosmynka, head of the App Review team at Apple. About 5 million apps are submitted to Apple every year, of which about 35% are rejected. Epic wants to prove what an impossible task Apple has accomplished by assessing all apps and app updates individually. In addition, things often go wrong.
> In 2017, 5.2 million apps were received, of which 33% were rejected. In 2018 and 2019, it was 4.8 million apps and there were 35% and 36% rejections respectively. That process is not entirely done by humans. Apps are scanned for malware, outdated SDKs, and banned items. Part of it can already be rejected on the basis of this.
The rest of the assessment is done by people and is a labor-intensive process. Kosmynka once said in an email that many review staff make 10-hour workdays. Something does go wrong, Kosmynka admits. Some apps are approved and later taken offline again. & ldquo; It's a human process. We make mistakes. We try to fix those errors. & Rdquo;
Only 1% of rejections are challenged
Since August 2020, Apple has offered developers the option to object if their app (update) has been rejected. This appears to rarely happen, according to the lawsuit between Apple and Epic Games. Kosmynka, quoted earlier, says that only 1% of rejections are contested. This came up in a discussion about the number of mistakes made by the review team. & ldquo; I think the number of errors is a tiny fraction of the effectiveness of the entire process, & rdquo; said Kosmynka.
Being able to challenge rejections became possible after the controversy over the Hey email app, created by Basecamp. Apple blocked updates from Hey after the app was initially approved. The reason they put forward was that the email app did not offer an in-app subscription, while Apple strongly urges developers to do so.
Phil Schiller: & lsquo; What the hell is this ???? & rsquo;
An interesting discovery during the lawsuit is that Phil Schiller was already concerned about scam apps in 2012, after a fake app reached the top 1 position in the App Store.
Apple pretends that the App Store is a safe place, where everything is properly monitored. But that is mainly marketing. The reality turns out to be less beautiful. It also becomes clear that Phil Schiller has been concerned about counterfeit apps for years, even before he took over responsibility for the App Store.
A scam app looks like you're installing a highly-rated app, but it's only meant to rip you off as much money as possible. For example, you get a very expensive subscription, which costs a few tens a week. The counterfeit apps steal not only the ideas, but also the revenue from the original apps. In an email, Schiller made it clear that he was not happy with the situation in the App Store.
& ldquo; What the hell is this ???? & ldquo Schiller asked when he saw that a fake version of the popular game Temple Run was at the top of the charts. The fake version had no sceenshots, had a ridiculous description and almost exclusively 1-star reviews.
Is nobody looking at these apps? Is nobody watching the store?
Scam apps have been a problem for the App Store for years. Sometimes they are easy to get out because they charge absurd amounts for in-app purchases. You then wonder how they can slip through the review process. But there are also apps where it is more difficult to recognize that they have been counterfeited. There are so many apps in the App Store that it is impossible for the review staff to distinguish all originals from counterfeit.
Schiller advised in 2015 to create an automated system to detect these apps at an early stage.