Friday 17 May 2013

Apple's App Crackdown

Apple is on a mission to track down all of the apps that are posing as app stores.

Apple has decided to take action against deceiving apps by searching through its App store and rejecting those apps that are fooling down-loaders.

This crackdown began in April when AppGratis was rejected from the App store for promoting products from other sources, rather than its own. This could mean a huge clear out of apps that are promoting anything other than itself.

AppGratis was originally approved until it was later removed, which caused quite a controversy. CEO of AppGratis, Simon Dawlat was in complete disbelief when he found out that his app had been rejected because the iPad version of this app was approved just days before.

Since then, there have been more and more developers who have reported rejections from Apple because of this very problem.

The App store has been referring to its regulation, 2.25, to track down these ‘app discovery’ apps. This regulation bans any apps that it feels customers could mistake as an app store within the App store.

There are a number of ‘app discovery’ apps that are purely the efforts of a developer trying to force an app into the chart’s. These apps can also be recognised solely as the efforts of marketing strategies.

Apple have a history of targeting these apps though. Back in 2011, the App store was vigilant against any app that offered in-game currency in exchange for downloading any other apps. So this is not something we should be surprised about. 

In fairness, this may actually come as good news for those customers who have already been deceived by ‘app discovery’ apps, like AppShopper for example. This new crackdown is likely to bring a stop to these deceiving apps and will mean we can browse through the App store without worrying about any apps posing as an app store in its own right.

The only thing that could be a problem though is if Apple decides to get to into its policing and ruins the App store altogether.

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