More Trouble In Apple's App Store

quickOnTheUptake writes in to update the story of foul play in Apple's App Store, which we talked over on Sunday. The Next Web, which broke the story, now provides evidence of rampant App Farms used for theft in the store. Here is a summary of the problems TNW has seen, which includes large-scale break-ins of the App Store accounts of users worldwide. Apple has responded to the initial reports, has disabled the account of the initially fingered rogue developer, and has called on those whose accounts were misused to change their password and credit card. Both TNW and Engadget, at least, believe the problems go far deeper than Apple is admitting.

Comments

Re:But they were approved!

[ergo98]

The important point is not that a rogue developer was able to get it, but that Apple was able to catch him, stop him, and let their users know about it quickly.

Apple didn't catch him. The "apps" in question were absolute trash (along with the 300+ iFart apps), making a mockery of any illusions that it's a curated garden.

However just to be clear, we already know that the Android market can do precisely the same thing, forcefully reaching out and removing rogue content. Instead of any ridiculous notions of curation, however, Android relies upon a permissions system that makes a user aware of the potential reach of any given application. It is far from perfect, yet despite some ignorant criticism directed at it recently it beats the hell out of anything on the iPhone.

Not really sure why we're talking about the phones though. The exploit in this case didn't necessarily have much to do with the actual handsets themselves.

Re:4568 apps?

[Bing Tsher E]

The apps from that 'developer' are things like 'xxx Quotes' where there are quotes collections for many many different people. And slider puzzles where there are many different pictures. And recipie books.

Basically the kind of 'stuff' where the actual codebase is a small container re-released over and over and over with different content.

That's part of the problem in general with the 'little Apps' model Apple has developed. There are separate 'Web Radio Players' for each radio station, leading to thousands of different radio 'apps.'

Apple isn't arrogant?

[copponex]

Listen, when your marketing literally states that you are "changing the world" with your phone, and apparently you didn't properly engineer the antenna, your customers are going to complain bitterly. And then everyone who realizes that Apple is just Microsoft with better industrial designers and better marketing are going to laugh at the brand loyalists who got bitten again because Apple favors form over function.

It's really not more complicated than that.