Here's another example from Wil Shipley where someone purchased 30 education copies and then refunded all of them. Total for the day nets out to -18 purchases and sales of $-360:
https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/768540129203855360
If you made say a high profile game that a particularly whiny subset of gamers took notice of, I imagine it could be much worse, but I don't know that this has happened yet. I'd bet money that it will though, and you have to wonder what Apple will do about it.
But Apple does sell one app through the iTunes App Store (Dark Sky, which they recently acquired). They sell several through the Mac App Store.
So, they do dogfood, but obviously they are not depending on revenue to survive here.
Side note: there are a bunch of apps listed under their developer that I had not seen before: Music Memos, Indoor Survey, Texas Hold'em, and Reality Composer.
Their pro apps are almost given away for free.
You could argue that $200 for Logic is not free, but similar DAW products costs 4-5 times more.
Not only that, but competitors need to charge you for major updates every couple of years, like any developer. Since Apple released Logic Pro X in 2013 it has kept pushing updates without asking for money.
I've seen this circumvented by creating a package deal of the old and new versions, which then gets discounted via the "you already own part of this set" mechanism, but it's a messy experience and not something that many developers have done.
So it's not at all feeding they own dogfood. Do do so Apple would need to run separate finances and make sure they don't get benefited in the review process.
I see this as a good thing, since it probably means that only the user is capable of removing apps, requiring intent, and that Apple can never remove an app from my device.
Want a refund? Awesome. Delete the software from your phone. Then, go to the appstore, find the app again, and click 'request refund'. If apple wants to improve the user experience, they can offer 'request refund' when someone uninstalls a recently bought app.
Or if that's too much of a disruption for users, just requiring the current device to delete it would cover most cases and be better then the current situation.
Users can set each device to automatically download and install newly-purchased apps.
Imagine the case where there is a device you have misplaced (or given to a relative, or had stolen, or ___). You must find every device with auto-download and purge the app from each one before requesting a refund.
So you create a situation where it is possible that the user quite literally can't comply with the terms of the refund.
Perhaps a compromise would be to
1. Delete from the current device; and 2. To verify the status of each app during OTA updates (which, by definition, have connectivity to Apple's servers). Any refunded apps would be greyed-out or something.
Uninstalling an automatically installed, never-opened app is not a breach of the personality of your device.
Why would you want Apple to have access to everyones online/offline usage habits for apps, and scans every time you restore a backup?
Why? Apple controls the OS, and can blacklist any App they want. They dont need to know whats installed on your device to prevent it from running.
(Except if your phone never connects to the internet or a cell-phone at all ;=) )
Also apple could just require the user to remove the app before requesting refund or at least putting it in a partially removed state from which apple then can remove if.
I.e. there is 0 benefit for any serious acting person. Only people who try to rip of app publishing companies profit from it.
This. Is. Ridiculous.
We all know this is an intentional design decision by Apple and that they would absolutely not have designed the workflow this way if they had to dogfood their own platform.