Apple stands by its decision to suspend the Apple developer account of Appstun, a mobile app company founded by one of the student winners of its Worldwide Developer Conference 2021. According to an announcement posted on Appstun's website, Apple took the action to suspend the developer account after the company's apps were rejected multiple times for violating the company's App Store guidelines.
Apple's decision to close developer accounts was recently addressed on X by Apple critic and 37Signals co-owner and CTO David Heinemeier Hansson, where he praised how privileged web developers are to be able to run their businesses without the interference of gatekeepers from big tech companies.
“Do not be afraid [sic] “A whimsical refusal can ruin a business overnight,” he said.
🚨 Our developer account has been unfairly terminated by Apple
We are two young co-founders, 20 and 23 years old. We've been building a mobile app company from scratch for the past 3 years. What started as a simple dream of winning WWDC21 has turned into our job. pic.twitter.com/gcTB9VldYy
— Batu (@batuhankrbb) August 26, 2024
Appstun co-founder Batuhan Karababa says he and another co-founder have been trying to work with Apple over the App Store rejection (Karababa says he's only an official founder on paper).
“We responded transparently and worked with Apple to ensure the app did not violate their guidelines. However, as the process progressed, we began to be rejected for issues we thought we had already resolved in our previous submissions. Apple determined that our solutions were not sufficient,” reads an announcement on Appstun's website.
The company has had multiple back and forths with App Review and been rejected multiple times over its app designing Apple Watch faces. Appstun has also come up with workarounds that allow it to offer more highly customizable watch faces in addition to more standard watch faces. However, these weren't actually watch faces in the traditional sense, but rather custom images and animations that run independently of the App Watch watch face system. Essentially, the app would take over the screen and display an image similar to a watch face, allowing Appstun to offer more customization. Of course, running custom animations like this can drain your Apple Watch's battery faster.
Apple was also concerned that Appstun was misleading customers by suggesting it was offering a regular watch face, without realizing that they weren't running a regular watch face.
To appease App Review, Appstun added a notice to the app saying that these were not real watch faces, but after much back and forth, Apple decided to terminate the company's developer account instead.
The company appealed on its website for help in restoring developer accounts.
According to Apple, there are more details about the matter, and that the company believes it made the right decision. The iPhone maker said that Appstun repeatedly tried to mislead users into thinking the app offered features it didn't support, and also promoted the app with deceptive advertising, which led to negative app ratings and reviews.
Some of the complaints from end users were that custom animations and images did not work as expected with the actual watch faces.
“I bought this hoping for something that would look like a Rolex watch face… it's just a picture, not a face… the hands don't even move,” one customer wrote. “Does this company have permission from Rolex to do this? I thought they did but I doubt it. This is a total scam to get people's money. I am asking for my money back but they won't accept it. I will report this to Rolex and see if they can do anything.”
Several complaints in reviews indicated that the app did not offer the watch faces it advertised, and some questioned why the app only had a 4.4-star rating when many of the reviews written were negative complaints.
Apple points to guideline 5.6 of its Developer Code of Conduct, warning developers that “repeated engagement in manipulative or misleading conduct, or other abusive conduct, may result in removal from the Apple Developer Program.”
Of course, misleading apps and fraudulent subscriptions have long been a problem in the App Store, but Apple has often failed to take action against many of the worst offenders.
For example, NGL, a teen question app, was actively scamming users and making millions of dollars until the US Federal Trade Commission stepped in and banned marketing to minors. Perhaps Apple should have caught the app sooner, before it was allowed to profit from deceiving kids.
Developer Costa Eleftheriou, who previously sued Apple after accusing scammers of stealing his app revenue, has drawn attention to App Store fraud over the years, highlighting examples of bad apps such as a cryptocurrency wallet app that scammed users out of their life savings, a children's game that included a hidden online casino, and a VPN app that was scamming users out of $5 million a year.
As Apple must justify to regulators the fees and charges developers must pay to publish apps on iOS, it may have an incentive to police apps it believes are fraudulent. Earlier this year, Apple announced it had prevented $1.8 billion in fraud on its App Store, down from $2 billion in potential fraud the year before. It also said it had rejected 248,000 app submissions that it found to be spam, copied other apps or were misleading, taken steps to stop 84,000 potentially fraudulent apps from reaching App Store users, and removed or rejected about 40,000 apps for violating bait-and-switch practices.