What I found unacceptable is "We are banning you and we won't tell you anything about it". This pattern is extremely common. And extremely frustrating. You can't put one in jail without telling why (and right to defend). In many developed countries you can't even fire a worker without a solid reason. It should be prohibited for companies to halt service someone without providing a reasonable explanation.
My wife was banned a bit before more. She sold one textbook and fulfilled the transaction perfectly. She found out she was banned when they said they were keeping her money for 45 days, and they would be kind enough to release it to her if the buyer confirmed receipt of the book (they did, and she did get her money eventually).
Based on the mail that was arriving, we _think_ that someone who lived at our apartment before us was doing something shady. Amazon doesn't care though.
This kind of thing is why it's incredibly frustrating that people blithely let a few companies control most commerce.
Admittedly, we at least had recourse, while you don't for whatever reason, in the event that you one day do want to become a marketplace seller. My point is that it's really easy to get blacklisted. Perhaps it's because they prefer to have some false positives, rather than deal with real bad actors. Just a conjecture.
Might be $500 max for the court fees.
Then they eventually have to explain it and litigate with you. And eventually revise their ridiculous CS practices.
By US standards, that would require an absurd level of legislative and/or judicial overreach. I don't think I'd even want to do business in that kind of regulatory climate.
Or does it even matter if the Apple App store is the only marketplace of its kind?
So, choose your poison. We can govern them, or they can govern us.
Sooner or later the IT infrastructure companies will need to be regulated like infrastructure providers.
IT infrastructure has nothing in common with this aside from ISP.
Really, given that this is a market that is growing double digits by year, the amount by which amazon dominates it is shocking.
And that is in a market that is still growing rapidly. For Facebook/Whatsapp this is even more obviously not true. Facebook even failed to leverage its social network monopoly to establish its messenger against insurgents, simply because they were a bit late.
The idea that economies of scale make it impossible for a company to never face competition is ridiculous. The only thing that can do that is govenment protectionism.
Along with economies of scale is the opposite effect: the inefficiency of bureaucracy and having competing interests between business units.
Being large isn't the magical unicorn you think.
If you don't want it to behave this way, as a consumer or developer, you just have to choose to not deal with it. But you don't want to, because it makes you money and makes you life more comfortable in some way.
What it means is that you value money/confort more than been respected by this company. Accept this is what you choose and don't bitch about it, this is dishonest. You can't have it both way.
A company can't dump chemicals in any river without oversight; it could be compelled to accept an appeals process when terminating a contract with a developer.
Imagine it this way: you are a contract developer, should you have no right to terminate a contract with a client under the terms of the agreement? Almost every contract I'be ever signed as a developer has some form of "either party can terminate this agree with <some days> notice."
From what I am reading here, we want to hold Apple to different rules than the ones we ourselves routinely follow?
I get it: Apple should give the guy an explanation. However making laws to require it? That's absurd. Should there be a law that when a girl (or guy) doesn't accept a dinner invitation that they provide a valid reason? That's really what this comes down to. And no, Apple isn't a monopoly. This company can still sell their products, just not at that particular store.
I feel bad for the situation, but extending government power into private business relationships is a bad idea. Contract law already covers this.
Society isn't harmed by this company not being able to sell on the App Store. This isn't dumping chemicals into rivers or denying service based on skin color.
If the developer was wronged, he could file a lawsuit. However given that the contracts governing the relationship were known in advance, the situation is just the realization of the risks inherent in doing business.
Precisely. You signed the contract. You could have not done so, but you wanted the money. And you wanted it to come from this source, because this source fits some of your needs. So you decided it was worth putting your life into their hands, and sometime, you loose. It sucks, but you are half responsible.
Now we can act as a society to make it illegal, but this won't happen.
Certainly not if everyone heeds your advice to "Accept this is what you choose and don't bitch about it". Bitching about stuff is a necessary part of the democratic process.
Making this illegal would result in an arduous approval process just to join a marketplace. Additionally it could result in bad actors being unable to be expelled from a market while the legal process unfolds. That could result in a net loss to consumers. Imagine a malware developer -- Apple can't evict them quickly because they'd have to perform extra legal investigation so they wouldn't get in trouble for acting too quickly.
There is a reason we don't accept that for our law system. We currently accept that from companies, and I don't think it's a good idea.
But don't get me wrong. I don't think going legal is the right way to go. I think either you accept it, and enjoy the benefits of playing with apple and stop complaining, or you don't accept it, complain AND follow the complaining with action such as putting your business elsewhere.
When a corporation behaves this way, it needs to hurt.
Such protections exist for employees, involve lots of lawyers and complexity, and sometimes screw companies and sometimes screw employees and sometimes screw both (though they do also fill an important need). But the economic cost of compliance and management of these rules is quite high, and there are a lot more employees than software developers by several orders of magnitude.
I'm in no way implying that such activity happened in this case, just that the policy makes sense.
An appeal process should be in place though.
Yes you can (if you're Goldman & Sachs). It's called "contempt of the court". See the Martin Armstrong case. There are others.
What a terrible idea.
https://consumercomplianceoutlook.org/2013/second-quarter/ad...
Local insurance claims gears the local premiums, obviously.
If you live in the city with the worst drivers in the country, your premiums will be high.
I get that there is money to be made on the iOS app store-- but why is there a willingness to set up shop in a town where if one of the local officials doesn't like you-- for any reason-- he or she can effectively confiscate your hard-made product so you can't sell it anywhere else and kick you outside the walls?
Stories like this from Dash (and others) is a real-living and breathing worst-case scenario... it makes the choice to not participate in this marketplace all the more obvious to me.
The smartphone 'market' is an oligarchy, ergo, it's not really a free market, and those kinds of principled positions just don't hold.
It's pretty reasonable to argue that Apple's arbitrary control of the AppStore is an anti-competitive practice.
If the market were commoditized, like, the choice you have for where you want to 'eat lunch' or 'buy a car' - it would be different.
Can I choose my opportunities? To some extent.
The point I was making is that this rhetorical device of "I need to eat" is used way too often as a euphemism for "I want to make a lot of money". It's used that way because the former statement elicits sympathy and the latter statement attracts derision.
In the context of the original comment, the "need to eat" phrase was used in the context of an app developer. You don't create an app on the app store as a last ditch attempt to feed your family. You do it to make money, and you do it knowing the risk that it won't be successful and you won't make any money. Apple's inscrutable opaque approval process is another annoying risk on top of that, but whether you're going to eat shouldn't be a part of the equation here.
At least Apple only takes ~1/3 of the value of the work you put into in the App Store.
If a particular bit of conduct would be a poor idea if everyone were to do it, that's a pretty good idea it shouldn't be allowed at all.
One example, on iOS WebKit if you flick to scroll, and then "click" (touch) on the screen while the scroll animation is still running, the click event will report a position on the webpage that was as if the scroll had never happened (e.g. you had clicked on the same place on the screen without having scrolled in the first place).
Here is one key tradeoff I see: the App Store brings more visibility in exchange for a cost. This situation accentuates another downside: plug-pulling for intentional or unintentional reasons.
FWIW, I use plenty of apps not on the app store.