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Apple's Past Sideloading Plans, Ecosystem Lock-in Strategy, and More Revealed in Internal Documents Friday August 20, 2021 7:35 am PDT by Hartley Charlton Documents highlighted by The Verge and disclosed as part of the Apple vs. Epic Games trial have revealed that Apple discussed plans for sideloading apps, sought to lock users into its ecosystem using gift cards, attempted to tackle chaos in the App Store review process, and more. aapl logo banner Several of the internal documents related to internal discussions around the possibility of sideloading iPhone apps outside of the App Store. Some of these discussions may have gone further than expected, since in 2008, software chief Scott Forstall asked Steve Jobs what text should appear to iOS users when they want to open a sideloaded app. Jobs agreed to the following alert: "Are you sure you want to open the application 'Monkey Ball' from the developer 'Sega'? " In October 2010, Jobs declared at a corporate strategy presentation that a key company aim would be to use the cloud to "tie all of our products together, so we further lock customers into our ecosystem." In 2013, Apple's senior vice president of software and services, Eddy Cue, lauded the potential of bundling iTunes gift cards with new Apple devices instead of putting them on sale to lock customers further into the company's ecosystem and dissuade them from switching to a different brand. He also raged at the Apple Retail team for its disinterest in selling iTunes Store gift cards. Who's going to buy a Samsung phone if they have apps, movies, etc already purchased? They now need to spend hundreds more to get to where they are today. On a related note, our apple stores (online and retail) are the only distributors around the world that decreased year over year in iTunes card sales. We are starting to make progress again with retail but it is always an uphill battle. Our teams just don't get the ecosystem. We (Val and team) just heard from Jennifer that iTunes cards are not a priority for her. This is ridiculous. Who leaves Apple products once they've bought apps, music, movies, etc! [...] ...In the meantime, Samsung is discounting and giving crap away everywhere... Samsung is now pushing Google Play cards with placement right below the phones - We haven't been putting our cards with our product displays (at 3rd parties) since the iPod. They have to be at a different location. We should have gift cards on the tables like we do in Apple retail. We should also consider having them pegged on all end cap of hardware. In 2012, Cue demanded to App Store head Matt Fischer that Shazam would not be featured on the App Store: No promotion... we are not going to promote something that puts it's goal as replacing our music player unless it is significantly better than our player and this is not. Apple went on to acquire Shazam in 2018. In 2016, Apple's Elizabeth Lee said that "Although they may be our best and the brightest apps, Matt feels extremely strong about not featuring our competitors on the App Store," when asked why the company does not want to highlight apps from Google and Amazon. The email thread suggested that this was standard App Store practice, with some competing apps being seen "through a slightly different lens than most." In 2015, Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed the issue of the Mac App Store 's lack of traction, putting it down to a lack of gaming and productivity apps: "I think the lack of gaming (along with the lack of native productivity apps) are the main reason the Mac App Store is dormant." Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller answered: We and the major game developers have tried high-end gaming on the Mac... but have failed to generate any sizable business in that genre. [...] On the native productivity app front it starts and ends with Microsoft and Adobe. Neither is on the store because they don't have to be. They can be on the Mac and distribute to users without sharing the revenue with us, following our rules on app engineering and business models, or go through any app review process. Many of the disclosed documents showed how Apple executives responded to repeated failings in the App Store review process. In February 2012, Schiller ranted: What the hell is this??? Remember our talking about finding bad apps with low ratings? Remember our talk about becoming the "Nordstroms" of stores in quality of service? How does an obvious rip off of the super popular Temple Run, with no screen shots, garbage marketing text, and almost all 1-star ratings become the #1 free app on the store? Can anyone see a rip off of a top selling game? Any anyone see an app that is cheating the system? Is no one reviewing these apps? Is no one minding the store? This is insane!!! In 2015, Schiller asked the App Store team to "PLEASE develop a system to automatically find low rated apps and purge them!!" In February 2019, a scam app that purported to be able to measure blood pressure using the iPhone's camera and a fingertip reached the top App Store rankings for medical apps. Later that year, apps that claimed to be able to measure a user's heart rate through Touch ID also came under internal scrutiny after being accepted on the App Store during the review process. Apple's Tom Reyburn seemingly admitted that "LinkedIn has been rejected for using the same language on their subscription call to action button that Apple uses in our own apps." "It's not right, but apparently it is what it is," Apple's senior director of developer relations Shaan Pruden replied. Reyburn added, "Amazon is also complaining about this. We need to have one set of rules that all apps follow whether they are from Apple or third-party developers." Apple also realized that it had erroneously allowed two separate games that featured school shootings on the App Store, seven months after they were approved. Discussions put the error down to the fact that "it took a total of 32 seconds to review both apps." In a similar case, Schiller questioned how a game about shooting protestors was accepted during the review process. Separately, the documents show that in 2011, Schiller suggested that Apple could "ratchet down from 70/30 to 75/25 or even 80/20 if we can maintain a $1B a year run rate," in terms of App Store commissions, since the 30 percent commission rate would "not last forever." He also proposed a scheme called "Jump Start" in June 2018, which would have given half of Apple's 30 percent commission back to developers in their first year to spend on iAd advertising. This idea appears to be a precursor to the App Store Small Business Program. In February of 2020, Apple's head of fraud, Eric Freidman, said that Apple was "the greatest platform for distributing child porn." He added that "we have chosen to not know in enough places where we really cannot say." It is not clear if these discussions were related to Apple's recently announced child safety features. Other interesting findings and tidbits from the internal document disclosures showed that Apple seemingly offered Netflix a discounted 15 percent in-app purchase commission, much like its arrangement with Amazon Prime Video, instead of its usual 30 percent rate, Schiller said that in terms of "threat level," the Amazon Appstore posed a "very high" threat to Apple, and in the second quarter of 2016, the App Store grew to be worth more than the Mac and iPad to the company. To read the full documents or for more highlights, see the original article. Tags: Eddy Cue, Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller, Scott Forstall, Epic Games vs. Apple Guide [ 138 comments ] Top Rated Comments nwcs Avatar nwcs 8 hours ago at 07:48 am Wow, companies acting like companies do and execs talking about ways to increase/maintain sales and revenue. Horrors! Score: 31 Votes (Like | Disagree) Beats by Frey Avatar Beats by Frey 8 hours ago at 07:49 am See, this is their privacy leaked. How does it feel? Score: 30 Votes (Like | Disagree) TheYayAreaLiving Avatar TheYayAreaLiving 8 hours ago at 07:40 am Wow! Atleast with this legal battle we're getting to see the dirt. Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree) SRQrws Avatar SRQrws 8 hours ago at 07:50 am Sounds like typical marketing/product management discussions that go on in corporations every day. You want dirt? Read transcripts of convos that went on at Enron. Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree) Expos of 1969 Avatar Expos of 1969 8 hours ago at 07:43 am This is extremely interesting and revealing. Keep it coming. Squirm Cook squirm... Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree) vagos Avatar vagos 8 hours ago at 07:54 am Wow, companies acting like companies do and execs talking about ways to increase/maintain sales and revenue. Horrors! Companies acting like companies is quite a vague statement. There are ethical practices and unethical ones. I'm glad we get to see apple for what it is. I don't like it when people make a glorified image of apple in their minds as if it's not a huge company which puts money over customers to a point. Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree) Read All Comments Top Stories app store blue bannerapp store blue banner Developers Complain as App Store Feature Promotes Rip-Off Apps Thursday August 5, 2021 6:12 am PDT by Hartley Charlton Apple has featured a number of apps with disproportionately expensive subscriptions on the App Store, arousing the ire of some developers. The App Store feature on the Australian App Store, first highlighted by Beau Nouvelle on Twitter, is called "Slime relaxations" and reportedly features apps that are non-functional and seek to charge disproportionately costly in-app purchase... Read Full Article * 105 comments appstoreappstore Phil Schiller on App Store Knockoffs in 2012: 'Is No One Reviewing These Apps?' Thursday May 6, 2021 1:49 pm PDT by Juli Clover Knockoff apps have long been a problem in the App Store, with scam apps sneaking past reviewers to compete with genuine apps and steal sales, and back in 2012, Apple's Phil Schiller was absolutely furious when a fake app made it to the top of the App Store rankings, according to documents shared in the Epic v. Apple trial. At the time, Temple Run was a super popular iOS exclusive title, and... Read Full Article * 124 comments idos 2 app iosidos 2 app ios Apple to Pull 'iDOS 2' DOS Emulator From App Store Thursday July 22, 2021 3:22 pm PDT by Juli Clover iDOS 2, an app designed to allow users to play classic DOS games, will soon be pulled from the App Store, the app's creator said today. According to iDOS developer Chaoji Li, he tried to submit an iDOS update with bug fixes to the App Store, but was told that the update was rejected because it violated the 2.5.2 App Store guideline that says apps cannot install or launch executable code.Durin... Read Full Article * 298 comments app store safe secureapp store safe secure Study Finds Up to 2% of Top 1,000 Paid Apps on App Store Were Scams Monday June 7, 2021 6:33 am PDT by Tim Hardwick Apple has used its app review process as a bulwark in recent legal assaults on its App Store policy, and put particular emphasis on the security benefits for iOS users when buying apps. However, an investigation has found that almost 2% of the top 1,000 highest grossing apps on a given day were some sort of scam. According to The Washington Post, which conducted the investigation, scam apps... Read Full Article * 98 comments app store review scamapp store review scam App Store Scam App Required a Good Review to Function at All Wednesday May 26, 2021 7:21 am PDT by Hartley Charlton An app that demanded at least a three-star review to function got through the App Store review process, it has been found (via The Verge). iOS developer Kosta Eleftheriou discovered that the "UPNP Xtreme" app, which claimed to let users stream video to a TV, presented the system's App Store rating box as soon as it opened. The rating box could not be escaped from and it was not possible to... Read Full Article * 105 comments apple app store outageapple app store outage App Store Not Working? You're Not Alone [Update: Fixed] Thursday July 29, 2021 5:06 pm PDT by Juli Clover Apple's App Store and iTunes Store are both experiencing outages at the current time, according to Apple's System Status page. The outage started this afternoon, and affected users may see slow App Store performance or may be unable to use the App Store at all. There are numerous reports on social media from users who are seeing App Store issues. It is not clear what caused the outage nor ... Read Full Article * 3 comments app store blue bannerapp store blue banner New U.S. Antitrust Bill Would Require Apple and Google to Allow Third-Party App Stores and Sideloading Wednesday August 11, 2021 12:17 pm PDT by Juli Clover New bipartisan antitrust legislation that targets Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store was today introduced by U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal, Marsha Blackburn, and Amy Klobuchar. The Open App Markets Act [PDF] is meant to create "fair, clear, and enforceable rules" that will protect competition and strengthen consumer protections. According to the three senators, Apple and Google... Read Full Article * 694 comments app store blue bannerapp store blue banner App Store Ecosystem Responsible for Estimated $643 Billion in Billings and Sales in 2020, According to Apple-Commissioned Study Wednesday June 2, 2021 10:00 am PDT by Juli Clover The App Store ecosystem facilitated an estimated $643 billion in billings and sales in 2020, an increase of 24 percent year-over-year, according to an Apple-commissioned study done by Analysis Group economists. [PDF] The study, "A Global Perspective on the Apple App Store Ecosystem," comes as Apple awaits a decision in its ongoing trial with Epic Games, much of which focused on App Store... Read Full Article * 32 comments app store blue bannerapp store blue banner Apple Pulls Controversial Anti-Vax App From App Store Monday August 9, 2021 4:03 am PDT by Hartley Charlton Apple has removed a social app aimed at unvaccinated people from the App Store for spreading misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, reports Bloomberg. The app, named "Unjected," calls itself a community for "like-minded people that support medical autonomy and free speech," built around dating and friendships. It allows users to create a profile, match with other users, send messages, and... Read Full Article fakespot ios app removedfakespot ios app removed 'Fakespot' Removed From Apple's App Store After Complaint From Amazon [Updated] Friday July 16, 2021 2:37 pm PDT by Juli Clover Fakespot, which is known for analyzing reviews from popular websites to determine their accuracy, today had its iOS app removed from Apple's App Store. According to The Verge, Amazon sent Apple a takedown request, which led to the app being pulled. Fakespot's iOS app just launched in June, and it was designed to allow users to log into Amazon and buy items while using the Fakespot engine to... Read Full Article * 188 comments Next Article maxresdefault Apple Shares New 'Today at Apple' Session on How to Shoot Portrait Photos on iPhone Guides iphone unlock apple watch Unlock with Apple Watch Not Working? When Apple introduced iOS 14.5 in April, it introduced the ability to unlock your iPhone with Face ID while wearing a mask, so long as you are wearing an Apple Watch. Here's some troubleshooting tips. iOS 15 General Feature Yellow How to Install iOS 15 iOS 15 is available as a public beta. Here's how to install it. macOS Monterey Piblic Beta Feature Temp How to Install macOS Monterey macOS Monterey is now in public beta. Here's how to install it. ios 14 7 guides sidebar thumb iOS 14.7 Features Out Now! 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